Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 9

  “Toasty! Then, I’ll keep some here and look at it when I can while I’m working,” Ember said. “Let’s see… why don’t you guys take these.” She tapped the top of the newest stack of papers. “If these really were altered by someone at MES, we don’t want to get caught with them here.”

  “I’ll take those,” I volunteered.

  “I sorted them so our pile of active-but-missing people weren’t printed again,” Ember said. “Why don’t you grab those, Mariana? And I’ll take the rest.”

  “There are a lot,” I said, not wanting Ember to have more to do, especially since she’d be working too.

  “I’ll start with the park and the maybe-park ones. I can probably just use not-park as a snack,” she chuckled. “And then the probably-not-park I can go over once I have patterns from the others. It’s not too many.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  The three of us gathered up our stacks and headed to the parking garage. I texted Thomas to let him know we were leaving and we piled into Mariana’s car.

  “Thanks for the lift,” Ember said.

  “Sure thing.”

  We drove in somber silence for a while. I didn’t know about them, but I was thinking about the daunting, somewhat depressing task ahead of us. As we got closer to Ember’s house, Mariana broke the silence.

  “How’s moving in going?” Mariana asked.

  “It’s great!” cried Ember. “The house is amazing!”

  I leaned back, grateful for the lighthearted new subject. After a couple of decades in the same small house they bought after moving in together, Dani and Charlie had decided to buy some land and get a custom house built. Construction had finished shortly after my internship began and we were all eagerly checking out the new house. It was set in the woods like Thomas’ with an even larger pond, as well as a little stable and a blacksmith shed for Ember and Charlie. The property was also within walking distance of the river Dani used to visit his family in Michigan. The house had a bunch of weird perks for elementals too, like a shallow – hardly more than an inch deep – stream that wound around the main level, so Dani could stand in water whenever he liked. The floors were all made of fire-proof tile. They also didn’t have a single rug, aside from a doormat, anywhere. Fire elementals were prone to scorching them and since water elementals matched the temperature of their environment, Dani wouldn’t even notice if the floors were cold.

  After a couple of direction reminders from Ember, we pulled up in front of the large house. It looked like a little landscaping had been done since I was here last. Ember collected her papers, said goodnight, and headed in.

  Mariana drove me back home and Rak and I went inside with our own stack. She promised to text me once she got home safely. I usually stayed up until Thomas got home, but I was feeling drained by the long, somewhat emotional day, so I took a quick shower and got into bed. Rak curled up on my feet and I soon fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Jen

  Even though I slept in pretty late, Thomas was still sound asleep when I finally got up. I left as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t wake him, which was impossible considering he was a vampire, but if I disturbed him, I couldn't tell. Rak hopped off the bed and padded silently out behind me into the hall. TS’ door was closed but I could hear him snoring softly as I tiptoed down the stairs, satisfied that everyone was back home safely.

  I made some coffee and helped myself to a bowl of cereal while it brewed. After getting a mug, I settled down on the couch in the living room and fooled around on my phone for a few minutes, before turning my attention to the huge stack of papers on the coffee table. Just before I could grab my first file, I got a text from Mariana to let me know she was about to leave for lunch and would be heading over after that. Right after I replied, I heard the stairs creak and turned to see Thomas coming down.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Morning.”

  “What's with all the paper?”

  “Grab yourself a cup of coffee and I'll explain everything.”

  He raised a curious eyebrow at me, but did as I suggested. Soon the two of us were sitting on the couch together. Thomas listened, quickly forgetting all about his coffee, as I explained everything Jon asked us to do and about all of the files and information we had found so far.

  “Wow,” he said when I was done. “Wow. That's… disturbing.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at my piles. “So, these are all the altered ones that Ember printed off?” I nodded. “Find anything?”

  “I haven't had a chance to go through them yet. We left not long after she printed them.”

  “You want some help?” He grinned sheepishly. “I am sort of a fast reader.”

  I laughed, but accepted his offer. I liked to think that I was a fairly fast reader in my own right, but couldn't possibly keep up with the speed of a vampire.

  Thomas picked up the a file and looked at it. “All of the changes are in red?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The first file is what's on the frontend and anything red in the second file was deleted or altered.”

  Thomas nodded. “Sounds good.” I only just started looking at mine when Thomas muttered. “That's funny…” He flipped through his several more times, so quickly I could hardly see the pages move. “The only thing that got changed in this file is that they deleted the vacation record. How weird.”

  “Why does MES keep track of that anyway?” I asked. I had taken several calls which were just people letting me know that they would be on vacation and the dates, then I was supposed to add them to the database, even if they didn't work for MES.

  “You know what Charlie's job entails, right?” Thomas asked.

  I nodded. Charlie’s job involved working with all of the local businesses that served magics in some way. He helped them design plans and procedures, both to prevent non-magics from finding out about us and what to do in the event that there was a secrecy breach. But I didn’t see what that had to do with vacations. “Yeah, I do,” I said.

  “Usually he just works with one or two representatives from each company. But if there is a secrecy breach, he has to speak with everyone involved. And if it ends up being something that may have been happening over a longer period of time, he needs to know which employees were there. If any of them were on vacation at the time…” He shrugged. “I think there are a handful of other things it's used for, including my job. Sometimes I get that automated email we were talking about to notify me that someone isn't feeding, but if I see that they're on vacation, I can assume they've made other arrangements. So…” He frowned back at the page. “I don't know why anyone would delete that.”

  “Weird,” I said. I flipped the file I was holding to the activity log and saw the exact same thing. “This one has a deleted vacation too!”

  “Really?” Thomas leaned over. “Okay, that's...” He picked up another file, skimmed it in the blink of an eye, and narrowed his eyes. “I'm going to text Charlie and see if it would be deleted for any reason…”

  I pulled out another file and skimmed over it while Thomas texted. This one had two deleted entries in the activity log. The first one said accidentally saved phone call information to the wrong account. And the second entry seemed to be that phone conversation. When he was done texting I showed it to Thomas, who agreed that it looked like an honest mistake. Then, we both found another one that had the vacation information deleted.

  “This is really weird,” Thomas said again, frowning at the files. He looked back and forth between two of them. “Hang on…” He started flipping rapidly through them in a flutter of pages, then stopped with a frown. “These are really long vacations.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “They're all…” He flipped through them again, then held out a hand for the ones I had found. “They're all at least three months and some of them are as long as six,” he said after checking them.

  “Those are long vacations.”


  “Yeah.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to read the text. “Charlie says he can't think of any reason that information would be deleted. And it would in fact be quite inconvenient if it was. So… this is wrong.” He glared at the files in his hands. “This is all wrong. I don't know what you've managed to stumble across, but I have to admit I'm a little freaked out about it.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  We kept sorting quietly and uncovered a few more that looked like honest mistakes and even more with deleted vacation information.

  “I don't understand why these are being deleted,” Thomas said in frustration. “It just seems so innocuous and it would be, if not for the fact there are so many of them! Coupled with everything else you've been looking at and…” He trailed off and shook his head. “It just doesn't make sense to delete this. And there's nothing else that seems to have been altered. It's like these people didn't want someone to know they were gone.”

  “But that's just like our group of people who are active,” I said. “It seems like they went missing and no one wants us to know.”

  Thomas nodded, eyes narrowed. “Except these people came back. So, where the hell were they? What were they doing there?” He flipped through the pages again and stopped in the accounting section. “Hey…” He flipped to the activity log again and then back to the accounting page.

  “Thomas?” I prompted.

  “This guy didn't have a single credit card transaction in the entire five months that he was on vacation!”

  “How do you go anywhere for five months and not spend any money?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” Thomas said.

  “Is there a big cash withdrawal?” I suggested. “Maybe he was living on that?”

  “Not that I see… it looks like he spent a couple hundred at…” He grumbled in annoyance as he tried to decipher the accounting information.

  I didn’t blame him. There were only four columns; the first was a date, followed by the name of the vendor – most of which were somewhat cryptic looking jumbles of letters – then how much they spent, and then a category.

  “This one says that it was an online purchase,” Thomas said. “And I think this looks like it might be the name of a travel website. He spent a couple hundred there, right before he vanished.”

  “You think he bought plane tickets or a hotel room or something?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. And then his next transaction is just for a few bucks. It says restaurant as the category. Oh, you know what, I think this might be Miami International Airport! He flew into Miami and grabbed a bite to eat! And then he came back five months later and bought a couple hundred dollars’ worth of groceries.”

  “But what did he do in Miami?” I asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “He didn't spend anything.”

  “Could it be a magic who doesn't need any kind of food?” I asked.

  He flipped back to the front page. “Wizard. He must have been buying food from somewhere.”

  I turned mine to the activity section and looked for the date that the person in my file had started her vacation, then to the accounting page. “I've got a big gap like that too!” I cried. “This one made a small cash withdrawal, not enough for three months, and then her last one says travel… Oh!” The jumble of letters suddenly made sense to me. “It's a hotel!” I looked up at Thomas slowly. “In Miami.”

  For a moment we were both silent. I swallowed nervously.

  “I think we might be on to something,” he said softly. He grabbed the other files we already sorted through and flipped to the accounting pages. “Another big gap for the duration of the vacation. Then a travel charge. And this looks like maybe a taxi or something… Miami!” he gasped. He held it out for me to see. “MIA; that's Miami, isn't it?”

  I looked at the jumble of letters. “I think so.” I took one of the files from his pile and skimmed over the accounting section. Once again, there was a months-long spending gap, surrounded by several purchases in a row, very similar in price. They were each categorized as car maintenance. I realized that it was a series of stops at gas stations, then spotted a city name I recognized in Maryland.

  “Hey, look at this.” I held it out. “This one is a gas station in Maryland.”

  He pointed to the one above it. “That's in Pennsylvania,” he said confidently.

  “And then this one…” I pointed to the last transaction before the vacation and frowned at the jumble of letters.

  Thomas studied it for a moment. “Hear me out,” he said with a chuckle. “Overnight parking garage.”

  “I think that's exactly it!” I said. “These people were all going to Miami!”

  “Yeah.” He studied another file. “I can't figure this one out though. I think it's another hotel in… it just says FTL.”

  “Fort Lauderdale?”

  “Yes!” he cried. “That's it.”

  “I don't think that's too far from Miami, is it?”

  “No, I don't think so.”

  We glanced nervously at each other, then each grabbed another file. Thomas flew through a couple more, setting both in the pile with the other suspicious ones. I was trying to decipher another accounting charge when he gasped.

  “Whoa! Greyson Turner!”

  “Who?” I asked.

  He held up a file. “He used to work at our MES office. He transferred to another oh… probably a decade ago.” He flipped through it a couple of times. “His vacation record was deleted and he didn’t spend any money for… oh. Huh.”

  “What?” I pressed.

  “His vacation time was listed as five months. But based on his spending he was only gone – and in Miami! – for two.”

  “How strange. Is he the only one like that?”

  “So far.”

  Since we found a new snag, I got up for a snack and a quick mental break.

  “I wish this made more sense,” I said to Rak as I sensed him following me.

  “Me too,” he agreed grimly.

  I had a feeling it was going to be another long night and helped myself to more coffee. When I returned to the living room it seemed that Thomas had taken a break to stretch. We sat back down together and I reached for another file.

  “Hang on,” Thomas said. “TS is up. He’ll want the details.”

  I nodded and took a few moments to sip my coffee. Sure enough, TS was down in just a couple of minutes.

  “What’s all this?” he asked as he entered the living room.

  Once again, I found myself explaining what Jon asked me to do. Like Thomas, TS listened with increasing alarm as I told him what we found so far. He picked up a couple of files and flipped through them, shaking his head.

  “What do you think of this one?” asked Thomas, holding one out.

  TS started to flip to the activity page, then stopped and went back to the front. “Greyson Turner?!” he cried, looking up at Thomas.

  Thomas nodded and pointed out how Turner’s vacation wasn’t as long as expected, but everything else seemed to fit.

  “Bloody hell.” TS studied the file more closely. “Oh, looks like he’s still a field agent. I could give him a call.”

  “A call?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I worked with him quite a bit when I was first starting out. I’m sure I could find something I’m working on that I could ask him about for advice or something. Then make a bit of small talk, ask if he’s taken a vacation recently. I won’t pry, just try to feel him out and see if I think he’s holding something back.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Thomas said. He looked at me and I nodded.

  “Thanks, TS,” I said.

  “Of course. I’m actually going in a bit early anyway; I fell behind on paperwork after taking those days off and want to catch up.”

  I couldn’t resist studying him, thinking of why he took the time off. Like Thomas, his veins looked like they were back to normal, but I still shivered remembering how strange it had looked. TS stretched and started upsta
irs. “Going to take a shower and grab some lunch. Unless you need a hand?”

  “I think we’ve got it,” I said.

  Thomas and I hardly had a chance to start looking at our next files when he paused and look toward the door.

  “Mariana is here.” He set down his files and crossed his arms, looking at them with a frown, obviously disturbed by our findings.

  “Great!” I said, jumping up to go greet her.

  I met her on the porch and helped her carry in her stack of files, as I filled her in on what we were uncovering.

  “Oh, that's freaky.” She joined us at the coffee table. “I started going through mine this morning and I found something weird, too. Have you seen any transactions for CVLR-BR? According to the category it’s a restaurant.”

  “CVLR-BR?” I repeated. I flipped to the transaction page on the file I was holding. “No… I don’t see it.”

  “It would be the most recent transaction,” Mariana said.

  Thomas skimmed a couple of his own files and shook his head. “No, I don't have it either.”

  Mariana sighed. “So far, almost every single file I’ve looked at has that. The only ones without it don’t look like they were altered by the same person. I think those might be genuine cases of someone lazy in IT.”

  “The rest all have a transaction from the same place?” I asked.

  “They all have a transaction from the same place and…” Mariana took a deep breath. “It’s the very last transaction they ever make! Then they go missing. And then their files are all altered to show that they're not missing.”

  “Then they're all going missing from the same place,” Thomas said.

  “That's what I think. And they're not spending much there,” said Mariana, flipping open one of her files. “I think they're just buying a couple of drinks. Maybe some dinner here and there. Then they never buy anything again. Ever.”