Page 4 of Ravenous Prophecy
The door swung open, and I found myself trembling for a moment as the officers walked inside. The one with a weapon gestured me forward, still smiling. I took a few hesitant steps, then paused.
“It’s not that I don’t want out of this room, but I do need to know that this isn’t going to end with my body abandoned in an alley?” My voice went up at the end of the sentence, and I winced. Taking a deep breath, I raised my chin. “I would like to call my lawyer?”
I flinched, biting my lip. The uptick made it sound more like a question than it was, and I tried my hardest to channel Elaine. Shoulders back, meet their gaze.
“He wants to call his lawyer,” the agent with the gun chuckled.
“I want to speak to my counsel. Now.” This time, I kept my voice flat, even. Elaine never had questions about anything in her life. When she wanted something, it happened.
The other agent’s grin was even more saccharine, somehow even more frightening. He nudged me forward. “If you would kindly move, please.”
My certainty crumbled. We passed by other boxes, and I caught brief glimpses of other people through the frosted windows. I didn’t see the man who had shared my room earlier, and I couldn’t help but be grateful. My hysteria, thepanic I had felt when I realized what was happening, made me feel ashamed now.
Swallowing, I shook my head. It shouldn’t matter that such an attractive man had seen me looking no better than one of the oracles in the park. What mattered was the facts.
“Please, I understand that you caught me in an awkward situation, but I need to talk to someone in charge. There are forces at work that are beyond what you or I can handle.” I followed the agent’s directions into another small room, the only decorations a metal table, two folding chairs, and a small black camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling.
The agent guided me into a chair, locking my hands to the table with a pair of iron manacles. They were old and covered with spell work. Pre-Edwardian language, I noted. Who built them? They’d obviously been around longer than the building, unless they had someone on staff who spoke the pre-Edwardian magical tongues.
But that was unlikely given?—
“Bradley Brooks,” someone said, slapping a thick file folder down on the table.
I yelped, jerking in my chair, the chains rattling. My heart pounded in my chest, breath coming fast. I hadn’t even heard her come in. Looking around, I realized the agents were gone. How long had I been here, focusing on something as ridiculous as the magical languages being used to keep me in chains?
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s me. I just… I need to speak with someone in charge, please. There’s a situation thatsomeoneneeds to address, it’scritical?—”
“There’s a lot of things that are ‘critical’ with you.” Thewoman dragged the chair out from the other side of the table, the legs screaming on the concrete floor.
I winced at the sound and blinked when I caught a good view of her. Sharp features, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, plush lips, and aneyepatch. If I had to guess, there might have been some fae in her blood, but what really struck me was the badge pinned to her shirt.
I was no expert on the MEA, but even I recognized what the dark stripe across the symbol meant.
“Oh, good, you’re a commander. Please?—”
“Bradley Brooks,” the woman repeated. She flipped open my file, pulling out a sheet of paper and examining it. “Given everything, I’m shocked we haven’t met before this. Destroying magical artifacts as an undergraduate.”
I hastened to explain. “I wasn’t destroying them. The Harvard University magical department simply didn’t understand the danger of allowing other students access to?—”
“Of course Daddy bought the magical studies department a new wing, so I can see why we weren’t called in there. But during your graduate work? An entire dissertation on Hive dynamics, arguing that the locusts, despite being mythical, could be tied to real-world crop destruction.” She leaned forward, lacing her fingers together, and I was caught by her single eye, my face heating at the mocking glint in it. “Yet, despite being laughed out of your thesis defense, you still ended up with a PhD.”
“It was onlyoneperson laughing. It wasn’t—it’s simply that—that is a vast simplification of what my thesis actually was. If we look at how the insect locusts destroy crops, then we compare it to what historical records about the Hive?—”
“Myths,” she said sharply, a correction that flustered me even more.
My heart sped. “If we compare it to what historical records say,” I continued, “then we do have a very good model for how the Hive were able to wipe out most of the magical practitioners in Europe.”
The commander made a humming sound and raised both eyebrows. “Strange how Columbia University’s arcane studies department was able to build a new lab after you received your PhD.”
I swallowed, sharply aware of how the donation of the Brooks Family Lab looked, even though I had never evenasked. Father had simplygiven.
“Postgraduate work.” She flipped over another page and shook her head, sucking in air. “It seems wewerecalled in there. A small fire in the historical records department. It destroyed documents that were over two thousand years old.”
My back straightened, chin going up. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. After all, the records show you were on a vacation in northern New York at the time, cell phone unavailable, no way to transport in and out without a helicopter.” She placed the sheet of paper back inside the file, straightening the edges so that they lined up precisely. “Very convenient, given that what was destroyed was a document related to Hive summoning rituals.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was on vacation. When I returned, someone had set fire to the records. It affected me too! My research was set back months by no longer having access to the originals.”
