Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 10

“That's certainly worth looking into,” Thomas said. “Can you tell what CVLR is in accounting?

  “Next time I’m at work I’ll see what I can find out.” She cleared her throat. “There's more.”

  Thomas and I glanced at each other in concern.

  “What?” I asked.

  “They're all non-humans. Every single one.”

  As she said it a thought struck me. “Thomas,” I began. “I don't think I've seen any non-humans in our list! Have you?”

  His eyes narrowed. “No.” He grabbed the pile we'd already reviewed and started sifting through it at lightning speed, then dropped it with a thud, looking stunned. “Witches and wizards, all of them.”

  “But does that mean these things are related? Targeting two groups?” Mariana asked. “Or completely separate?”

  “I don't know,” Thomas said. “We'll just have to finish going over these and then start looking for similarities.”

  Thomas and I finished ours pretty quickly and started helping Mariana. Sure enough, most of her pile had their missing status changed to active. And every single one of them had indeed gone to whatever CVLR-BR was as their very last stop. When we finally had everything sorted, with a pathetically small pile of honest mistakes compared to whatever malicious edits were happening, we all sat back and sighed.

  “What now?” Thomas asked grimly.

  “I think now we have to try and find commonalities,” Mariana said. “What's happening with these witches and wizards going to Miami for a few months is completely different than these people going missing and never coming back.”

  “What else can we look for?” I asked. “None of your group seems to have gone to Miami and none of ours went to CVLR.”

  “Well,” Mariana said. “I guess we can read the activity logs and see if we find anything about the park or other commonalities.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Thomas said. “Might as well get going.” He shrugged and then stood. “Why don't I grab some pens and paper? If we start seeing something in the activities and notice a pattern we can write it down.”

  Marianna and I agreed and a moment later, he was back with a couple of pads of paper and some pens. We each grabbed a handful of files from Mariana’s pile and got to work. A few minutes later TS came back down and joined us for a little while. We went over our newest discoveries with him.

  “Okay, this is just getting more and more disturbing,” he said, as he looked at some of the files Mariana brought with her.

  “And we can't find a single connection between the two groups,” Thomas snarled. “The only thing they have in common is what they don't have in common, which is what type of magic they are. None of the ones Mariana brought have had their vacations deleted. And none of ours have been to this CVLR place. Any idea what that is?”

  “Not a clue,” TS said as he looked at his phone. “It's getting close to when I was hoping to leave for work,” he said. “Although I don't know how I'm going to concentrate on a bunch of bloody paperwork while I'm thinking about this.”

  “Sorry,” Thomas offered. “I'll let you know if we find anything big.”

  “Alright, sounds good.” TS stood and headed for the door. “See you all later then.”

  I picked up another file and started to go over it. “Hey,” I said, grasping at anything I could find. “The activity here for the original missing report for this guy says that he was hanging around a weird vampire on a farm.”

  “Interesting,” Thomas said. “Does it say where?”

  I double-checked it. “No.”

  “How long has he been gone?” Mariana asked.

  “Um, looks like four years,” I said, checking the date.

  “That's about as far back as I found them happening,” Mariana said.

  “Not seven?” asked Thomas in surprise.

  “No, I don't think any were as long ago as seven years.”

  “But that's when the park disappearances started, right?” Thomas said. We nodded. “So, either they expanded to… whatever this is or…” He threw up his hands in frustration. “Or these are completely different!”

  I wrote down farm and weird vampire on my pad and went on to my next file. Once again, there was nothing in it that seemed at all similar to the others, aside from the credit card charge at the restaurant. I noticed that this one was the day before my birthday and chuckled at myself.

  “I've got a suspect’s name!” Marianna announced. “This one says that he was saying something about “Reave’s new group”. Four years ago as well!”

  “Oo, write that down,” Thomas said. Mariana did, no sooner had she finished when Thomas said. “Hey, I've got a farm. Let me check the dates… four years ago. It says, “He's probably on that stupid farm. He usually goes there for a couple of weeks at a time and says it's a lot of fun. But this time he hasn't come back.””

  “Could that be the vampire’s farm?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  I picked up another file and skimmed it. No mention of a farm or vampire, just a simple activity saying that this guy had been acting a little funny and then didn't come back. I wrote it down and went on.

  “This is interesting,” Mariana said. “This guy’s activity says, “He told me he wasn’t supposed to tell, but that he was involved in something big and wasn’t sure when he’d be home, but probably not for a long time!” Looks like he bought something at CVLR-BR on June 16th, three years ago, and nothing since.”

  “June 16th?” I cried.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the day before your birthday,” Thomas said, looking just uncertain enough to be cute.

  “And…” I started sifting through my growing stack of reviewed files, before giving up and handing them to Thomas. “Can you find the June 16th transaction and see if it was three years ago?”

  His eyes widened and he took them and skimmed through a million times faster than I could have. “Yes!” he announced.

  “This one too!” Mariana said, holding up a third.

  “I think we just found a connection,” Thomas said. “Let’s go back, everyone write down your CVLR dates.”

  Soon, the three of us were flying through the files, scribbling dates and tally marks. I wasn't sure about them, but I had four years’ worth of dates, all about six months apart. I leaned back as Mariana finished the final file.

  Wordlessly, we slid our pads to the middle of the coffee table. They were the same. Every six months for the last four years. Every single person in this stack of papers had visited CVLR-BR on one of the same dates and was presumably never seen again.

  “Why are they going there on these dates?” I said. “What are they doing?”

  “Some kind of a meeting?” Mariana suggested. “Or a class?”

  “Or the kidnapper just strikes once every six months?” Thomas said, not sounding like he was convinced by his theory.

  “And all of them non-humans,” I said.

  Thomas nodded and picked up his pad. “I got two mentions of a farm. And one of them specifically saying the missing person was hanging around with a vampire. Five others saying that the missing person had some friend they didn't like…”

  “Reave is the only name I found,” Mariana said. “But I also got a couple vampires and couple of farms.”

  I nodded. “Same, no names, but someone mentioned a vampire with a funny name, and something about how this one guy started saying he was going to join an army.”

  “Like the Legion?” Thomas said.

  “I didn't get that impression,” I said. “It was something about how he's been talking about joining some “stupid army” with his friends who are bad influences.”

  “Oh, I got a couple of bad influences,” Mariana said.

  “I saw that phrase too…” Thomas sighed. “This doesn't sound like the park.”

  “No, it doesn't,” Mariana agreed. “But whatever it is, it's not good.”

  “No.” Thomas drummed his fingers on his knee. His fingers s
tilled and he looked toward the driveway.

  “Who’s here?” I asked.

  “Sounds like Charlie’s car, but he’s at work.”

  Mariana was already pacing, so she veered into the entry way. “It’s Ember and Dani,” she announced.

  “What's going on?” Thomas said, as they joined us in the living room and sat down on the other couch.

  Ember’s eyes were flaring with frustrated reds and Dani’s were churning with light blues and grays. He looked skeptically at our stacks of paper.

  “I don't know about you,” he said. “But we’re finding some pretty fucked up stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Ember agreed softly.

  “I don't know if our findings are much better,” Thomas said.

  “I thought you were at work,” I said to Ember.

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t stop thinking about this. It was a slow day and I said I wanted to go home and work on getting the stable ready. And they let me.”

  “When are you getting your horse from Arizona?” I asked, desperately wanting to change the subject to something happier, even briefly.

  “We’re getting them soon, hopefully,” she said eagerly.

  “Them? I thought it was just yours,” said Mariana.

  “We’re getting three!”

  Dani groaned. “I swear, I am not going to get suckered into taking care of them.”

  “Are you getting one too?” Thomas laughed.

  “No,” Dani said. “Char decided that horses are herd animals, so we need more than one. And if Ember is going to start riding again, then he wants to ride. And then his sister got wind of it and since she doesn’t have space…”

  “I would think you’d be a great rider,” I said. Water elementals tended to pick things up easily.

  “I can ride,” Dani said. “I just don’t enjoy it.”

  “You enjoy it,” Ember teased. She turned to us and in an exaggerated whisper said, “He’s just horrifically allergic to hay and is miserable for hours every time.”

  We all laughed, maybe a little too hard.

  Then, Ember heaved a sigh. “So, what do you guys find?”

  Once again, we went over our findings. Ember’s eyes flared wildly and Dani shook his head the entire time.

  “The good news,” Thomas finished. “Is that we have one possible lead.”

  “What's that?” Dani asked.

  “One of our wizards who took a mysterious vacation in Miami was Greyson Turner.”

  Several shades of blue rippled across Dani’s eyes and he arched an eyebrow. “Greyson Turner? The guy we used to work with, Greyson Turner?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Hmm,” Dani said. “That’s interesting.”

  “I thought so,” Thomas said. “TS is going to give him a call and just feel him out a little bit.”

  Dani nodded. “Good, maybe we'll get somewhere.” He waved an annoyed hand at the various stacks of papers scattered around. “We haven't turned up anything better with all this crap. But one thing is for sure, whoever altered these files was up to no good.”

  “But was it the same person?” asked Mariana. “Can we prove any of this is related?”

  I set down the file I was holding with a sigh. “Jon said the park is the priority,” I reminded them. “If we can’t connect these altered files to it, we have to put them aside.”

  Ember groaned. “I know.”

  “So, what about you Ember?” Thomas asked. “Since you were actually looking at confirmed park incidents.”

  Ember sighed and her eyes darkened and dimmed. “I couldn't find a single connection between any of them,” she said in frustration. “Not a single, dehydrated fucking one! None of them work in the same place except for two. But according to my dad, they’re in completely separate offices. None of them have any similar trends. The only similarities in their transactions are that some of them do seem like they went camping. Most of the interviews we have regarding the disappearances mentioned that they were going to the park.” She sighed again and gestured to us. “We don't have anything like yours where they all went to the same place or on the same day. They're all different types of magics, non-human and human alike. Slightly more of them go missing in the spring and summer, but that could easily be because the weather is nice. It honestly seems like these people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only other evidence I've been able to turn up is that some of them have been confirmed dead but even that seems random.”

  “Did they find bodies?” Mariana asked.

  “No,” said Ember. “It's through pack bonds with werewolves and stuff. A week or so after they disappear, sometimes a little longer, a few of them have a were of some kind who has come forward to say they can sense that the missing person has died. But that's it. There was…” She opened a notebook and flipped through it. “There was one werelion who died abruptly; his soul-pridemate was one of the people missing. It’s likely that he died when the soul-pridemate did, but it’s just a guess. But… there was one really weird one where the wizard vanished, but his familiar didn’t.” Ember flipped a couple of pages and read silently for a moment. “So, the familiar said that he couldn't sense his wizard for a while, like for a few days!”

  “Couldn’t sense him?” Thomas asked in concern. “Did he elaborate?”

  “No, that’s all it said. But then,” Ember went on, “the familiar contacted MES and said that he could sense his wizard “clearly” again. According to the record an agent was sent out, but by the time they got there, the familiar was dead.”

  I looked across the room to the basket where I knew Rak was and was met by a pair of yellow eyes and flattened, concerned ears.

  “Was there any more to it than that?” I asked.

  “No,” Ember said. “It wasn't very well recorded.”

  Thomas sighed. “Disturbing.”

  “I was really hoping you guys would have turned up something else to go on,” Dani said.

  “Maybe we should switch piles,” Mariana suggested. “Get some fresh eyes and see if we notice any similarities in the batch we didn’t look at.”

  “Don’t know what else to do,” Dani said grimly. He leaned forward and grabbed a file, then sat back and started looking it over.

  The five of us sat in silence for a while, slowly filtering through the other stacks. Nothing seemed to jump out at me as being the same, other than the fact that these people all went to the park.

  “One thing is for sure,” Mariana said. I jumped at the sudden sound. “I don't think anyone who went to the park intended to disappear. I don't see any mentions of how they were acting strange or hanging around bad influences, like our group was. It seems like these people just went camping and never came back.”

  “I'm noticing that too,” Ember said. “You guys have stuff that made it seem like all the people who went to CVLR knew that they were going to disappear somewhere. And I don't see any who have been reported as dead.”

  “And all these witches and wizards obviously went willingly to Miami and then came back,” Dani said. A series of worried gray waves crashed across his eyes. “I hate to sound like some kind of a conspiracy theorist, but something is happening. And it’s really starting to seem like three separate somethings.”

  “I think you're right,” said Thomas darkly. “I think this is three separate things. I just can't see a connection between any of them except that they're all disappearing in some way.”

  “Except the wizards aren't disappearing,” Dani said. “They're coming back.”

  “Do you think…” Mariana said hesitantly. “It's SHA?”

  I suppressed a shudder. SHA was an extremist group dedicated to the superiority of witches and wizards. They were the ones who had captured us and taken us to the facility.

  “I'm checking for that,” Dani said, flipping open another file. “But I haven’t seen a single SHA tag. There's no way there are this many affiliates going undetected.”

  “I agree,” Thomas said.
“I didn't see a single one either.”

  “I'm baffled.” Dani tossed the remaining papers on the table.

  Thomas sighed. “Yeah. All I have are more questions.” He stood and started to set his handful of files down, then sucked in a sharp breath and dropped them. His shoulders visibly stiffened.

  “Thomas?” I asked in concern.

  His mouth opened like he was going to say something, instead, he dropped to the floor.

  “Thomas!” I shrieked, throwing myself off the couch to his side.

  Dani was by my side in a flash. “Tom!” He gently patted Thomas on the cheek a couple of times. “Tom, hey!” I swallowed hard as Dani followed it up with a much harder smack. “Thomas! Fuck!”

  “Is he…?” Mariana gasped.

  “He’s alive,” I said. Thomas was obviously breathing, but it seemed strained.

  “Do you think it was the blood magic?” Ember said, flaring eyes turning to Dani as if she expected him to pass out next.

  “No.” Instead of elaborating, Dani pulled out his cell phone. His eyes churned and grayed as it rang. He cursed again, then made another call. “Char!” he spat the moment I heard Charlie answer. “Something happened to Thomas, find TS now.”

  “Ashes, hang on!” I heard Charlie cry.

  Dani clicked speaker and set the phone on the coffee table, then focused his attention back on Thomas. A tell-tale streak of blue rippled through his eyes and I knew he was checking Thomas’ blood pressure.

  I tried to think of how far it was from Charlie’s office to TS’. Was TS even at his desk?

  “Danio?” came Charlie’s voice. Even though it was a single word, I knew before he continued. “TS is unconscious. I’ve got people on the way to help. What happened to Thomas?”

  “Nothing,” Dani snarled.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t Thomas. Hang on...” Dani half-turned and snapped his fingers at me. “Call Shannon. Now.”

  For a moment I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that something had happened to Thomas. It was TS. More specially, one of his soul-packmates. Rak rubbed gently against me and pulled me out of my panic. Hands shaking, I called Shannon. Had something happened to her?!

  “Hey, Jenny!” Shannon said brightly after what seemed like a thousand rings. “What’s up?”