Courts and Cabals by G.S. D'Moore (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

climate, it could be deadly for the Response Division; and despite his accusations, Vernon very much believed the division had an important mission to carry out.

“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded his head. “However,” he stuck his neck out, “I do believe this warrants future investigation.”

“I agree,” she answered immediately. “Tell me about the boy. He’s the best lead we have.”

Vernon told her: average kid, toed the line with some school rules, outright broke others. The cabal affiliation was a surprise to her, but not by much. The cabals always tried to recruit them when they were young and stupid.

“What tests did you order?” she swiped to pull up the medical data.

“Standard physical with standard DNA panel,” he informed. That was the protocol on cases like these.

“You have my authorization to do a deep dive,” she ordered. “If this was a magical attack of some kind, there could be latent effects. I’ve seen it before, and we would be failing in our duty to protect a US citizen if we didn’t look deeper.” She put a good amount of political spin on what amounted to a gross invasion of genetic privacy, but it got them where they needed to go.

A deep dive was a full mapping of a person’s DNA. It was time consuming, expensive, and would end up on a report that went to every government each month. With Dupree’s cabal affiliation, there were going to be calls from lawyers, but they were willing to take that chance. The new data would tell them, indefinitely, if someone was trying to unleash a magical plague with Cameron Dupree as the carrier.

“Whoa . . . That’s a little much,” Vernon told himself.

There had only been two instances where a disgruntled mage had tried to unleash a magical plague. One had tried to use the postal service as a delivery method, and the other a dirty bomb over Philadelphia. The postal services’ own ineptitude foiled the first attempt, and the Division only had to do clean-up operations. Vernon had been on the second case that took down the mage and contained the plague. In both cases, there was a potent, magical trail that something with that much destructive power left in its wake. He hadn’t seen anything like that at St. Vincent’s.

“I’ll put a call back into the locals to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary,” he offered.

“You’ve got good ties with that local shifter sheriff,” from the tone of her voice, she knew they’d bumped uglies.

He didn’t know how she knew, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He also felt exhilarated in a way that was lacking over the last few days. Proving that he wasn’t a failure, and finding new leads, had him firing on all cylinders.

“Do you want me to call someone and put them on the wendigo case?”

“No,” her single word brought all his new-found enthusiasm to a crashing halt. The mission still continues as usual. We don’t have anything concrete at this time, and the DNA mapping will take weeks. You’ll need to multi-task, Vernon. Now, get your ass on that plane to Lincoln, and keep me informed.”

That was an order he couldn’t argue with. He left her office feeling both satisfied and frustrated. That was something new to him.

Chapter 16

“Shit,” I hustled across the hall, holding my knife in one hand. I never went anywhere without it. My other hand struggled to hold up my towel, and balance my shower caddy. “Shut up,” I growled at the chuckling shifter. I would have given him the finger, but that would’ve resulted in me flashing him. No one wanted that.

Wednesday had come and gone, and aside from the morning sex, it had been like any other day of my high school career. After days of traveling with bodyguards, being paranoid about every dark corner, and having a hot-as-fuck dwarf sleep in my room; it was surreal for the day to be so normal. As I walked the halls and moved between buildings, not only did Aveena’s changelings not try to kill me; they were actually polite and friendly.

One even approached me, nervously wringing his hands, to ask if I knew when Jerome was going to start selling again. Not only had this little blood feud affected my own hustle, but it had thrown off the student body’s ability to get weed at a very stressful time. The change in atmosphere put me at ease, and that showed Wednesday night.

After going several days with little sleep, on top of Dani’s nightly beatings, I’d zonked out and overslept. Now, I had to rush through my shower, skip breakfast, and make it to math in time for the midterm. Mrs. Fletcher wasn’t as much of a hard ass as Miller, but she was a stickler for tardiness. If I was late, I’d have to make the test up in her office after classes, and automatically get docked ten percent. If Lilith and I were going to do college, I needed to keep my grades up.

Today, the shower stalls were empty for all the wrong reasons, but I still grabbed the handicap stall and turned the water to hot. I used the steamy blast from the faucet to wipe the last bits of sleep from my body, and hurriedly soaped up. As I scrubbed the sweat off my skin, I thought back to last night.

Despite my desire, I did not take Dani to pound town. It was the last day of her duty to protect me, and she was committed to remaining vigilant. She had a different idea of how to make the night special.

“Here, I want you to have this,” she handed over the short-sword that had been attached to her hip every night.

“But this is your favorite sword,” I took the cold-iron blade she’d forged with her own two hands. It was surprisingly