Chapter 3

  I drove home after our late lunch/early dinner on a wave of warm certainty that, as first dates go, my date with D.T. had been a complete success. We'd firmly established interests in common, as well as all manner of things we didn't know about one another yet. And, of course, confirmed that the chemistry we'd felt every time we met during that summer had been real.

  As I cruised slowly down the road toward the Hall's front gates, the sun was setting on what had been an absolutely perfect day. Sparkle, too full of energy and my happiness to stay attached to the Master Key, had done several circuits around the interior of the little car before settling on the dashboard where she beamed up at me.

  I could feel that Penny was also soaking in my happiness. As was her nature, she was quite a bit more subdued about it, but our moods were distinctly reinforcing one another.

  I hoped that D.T., assuming our budding relationship went anywhere, would be able to adjust to that. But even that thought wasn't enough to put a dent in my good mood.

  So it was a bit of a jolt to see a man standing by the Hall's gates as we approached. I slowed my car and pulled onto the verge opposite the gates, then took a long look at my visitor.

  He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with straight, short black hair swept back from his forehead and slicked down, and was clean-shaved. He was dressed in a three-piece gray suit with a slim, dark blue tie, a matching handkerchief neatly folded in the suit's breast pocket, and was leaning lightly on a slender black cane.

  Even if I hadn't been able to sense the magic radiating off of him I would've suspected that this was another practitioner. Or possibly a banker. But I was willing to bet he was another representative from the International Consortium of Organized Arcana. He just seemed to be cut from the same cloth that the last one, Edwyn Cuthbert, had been.

  "I don't like this," Sparkle said. "We could go back to town."

  "I agree," Penny's voice drifted out of nowhere behind my left shoulder.

  "Hang on," I said, and pulled out my cell phone. I called the Hall's number, and was unsurprised when Ken picked up on the first ring.

  "He's been out there for almost an hour," Ken said over the speaker when I asked. "He used the buzzer a couple of times, then settled in to wait when nobody answered."

  "Lovely," I said. "Why didn't you call me?"

  "I'm reasonably sure he's ICOA, and you know that they still want to try to have at least a friendly working relationship with you. He has presented no threat and appears content to wait," Ken said. "I was content to let him and see how long he would." Then he sighed and added, "And…I didn't want to disturb your date.

  I rolled my eyes. This from the person who'd chastised me for being too lax about my own personal security in public. "Should I talk to him?"

  I could almost hear the shrug in Ken's voice. "It's up to you."

  I grunted noncommittally. "Well, let's see if they can put their best foot forward on the second try," I said. "Objections?"

  Penny growled faintly, but didn't protest. Instead, she said, "I will be waiting in the shadows by the fence, in case he tries something stupid."

  "Thank you, Penny. Sparkle?"

  Sparkle sighed a little, but nodded. "I'm staying with you, and visible, so he knows you're not alone."

  "Thank you both," Ken said. "Do you have your earbud with you?"

  One of Wadsworth's very clever brownies had enchanted an earbud that connected to the Hall's security system. Once I put it in my ear, it became invisible and undetectable so that Ken and Wadsworth would be able to hear everything was said around me, and could in turn communicate with me, without being heard.

  "Yes, I have it," I said. "I'll put it in while I'm getting out of the car."

  "Then have at it," Ken said. "But do be careful."

  "Always," I said, and closed the call. "Ready, girls?"

  "Ready!" Sparkle and Penny replied together. I felt Penny's presence fade a little, and assumed that she'd just used her shadow-travel ability to shift over to the fence. Sparkle took up her accustomed perch on my right shoulder, and I got out of the car.

  As I did, I slid the small, flesh-colored earbud out of my purse and into my left ear, hoping I'd managed to make it look like I was just scratching an itch or something.

  Then I turned to face my visitor from across the narrow, two-lane road. "Hello."

  He bowed slightly at the waist. "May I assume I have the pleasure of addressing Lady Caitlyn Reid?" He asked in one of the most stereotypically upper-class British accents I'd ever heard. If I found out he'd attended Eton College I wouldn't have been at all surprised. The stuffy old male professors at Cambridge hadn't sounded as unconsciously superior as this young man did.

  "You may," I said. "You have me at a disadvantage."

  He smiled politely. "Gordon Chapman, ICOA." He bowed politely again. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Reid."

  Glancing both ways first - Sister Sarah would've been proud - I crossed the road and stood on the opposite side of the drive from him. I saw his eyes flick to Sparkle, and then back to my face.

  "May I ask what you're doing here, Mr. Chapman?" I asked in the same absently polite tone he'd been using.

  "Of course, Lady Reid," he said. "I'm here to make a second attempt at first contact with you, as it were."

  "Fifth," I said shortly.

  He blinked a few times. "Pardon?"

  "Fifth attempt," I said, still in a politely conversational tone. "If you count Bellinus von Einhardt's two attempts to control my mind to gain access to Oakwood Hall, and his violent assault on my home in April."

  Chapman cleared his throat, and I was a little relieved to see some of his self-assurance crumble. "Ah…I…am afraid I was not aware of those events. Only of Wizard Cuthbert's attempt to speak with you in early May…" He trailed off and struggled to regain his verbal footing.

  "Where Mr. Cuthbert and I were unable to reach an agreement about the ICOA's continued holding, against their will, of a clan of dusk foxes who are in a protective vassal agreement with my family?" I asked, wondering if he'd been told about that.

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  Some of the color drained out of his face. He was, at least, aware of what the ICOA's apparent breach of a vassal agreement might mean. "I don't know anything about that either," he said quickly, "only that Wizard Cuthbert didn't think you were open to friendly relations with the ICOA. But our leadership wanted to try again -"

  "And they perhaps thought that sending someone closer to my own age might grease the wheels a bit, so to speak?"

  Sparkle giggled.

  Chapman glanced at her again, cleared his throat behind his hand, and tried to regain his composure. "I'm afraid this isn't going at all the way I'd hoped. Perhaps we could speak privately? I saw you briefly in town, but didn't stop, as I had no desire to have this conversation with a member of the mundane constabulary present."

  If he knew that D.T., as out of uniform as I'd ever seen her, was the local police constable, then the ICOA had been keeping tabs on me and on the town of Oakwood. I wondered if this young man even realized that he'd just told me that, as clearly as if he'd said it.

  "I'm afraid not," I said. "My companions go everywhere with me."

  "Companions?" he asked, glancing around, then starting as Penny slid out of the shadows by the gate, just to one side of him. She sat down on her haunches and tipped her head, giving him a perfectly innocent look of curiosity.

  "Oh," he said faintly.

  "And we," Sparkle said firmly from my shoulder, "aren't leaving Caley alone with a strange man. Talk or scoot."

  "Sparkle," I said gently, "there's no need to be impolite." I stared at Chapman. "The sad fact of the matter is, Mr. Chapman, that the ICOA hasn't done a particularly good job of putting their best foot forward so far."

  Penny huffed and said, just audibly, "That is a tremendous understatement."

  Chapman twitched again as she spoke, his eyes widening a little in surprise. Perhaps he'd never heard any of the dusk foxes held as pets by the ICOA speak. Penny had confirmed, when asked, that the collar von Einhardt had used to enslave her will had also prevented her from speaking.

  "So you'll have to forgive me," I went on as if she hadn't spoken, "to find another ICOA representative on my doorstep without so much as a polite call to schedule an appointment."

  His eyes returned to me and he cleared his throat again. "That's…actually one of the things my superiors wished me to speak with you about. They asked me to express our concern over your isolation here in Oakwood Hall, as well as your family's history of…shall we say friendly relations with the other supernatural communities? Especially the Sidhe and other residents of Faerie." His eyes flicked down to Penny, then over to Sparkle, before returning to me. "Not to mention the issue of the general awareness of the supernatural world that seems to be prevalent in the town of Oakwood -"

  He cut off as I took several steps forward, his head lowering as he had to look down to maintain eye contact with me. He was almost a full head taller than me.

  "Why, exactly, are those problems?" I asked, struggling to hold on to my temper. "It seems to me, based on recent events, that the ICOA is at least partly responsible for that awareness. Forcing a dusk fox - one whose clan is supposed to be living in harmony with my family - to attack me in the open, in Oakwood's streets, is hardly keeping the supernatural world a secret. Neither is battering down my front gates with a gigantic summoned boar, or engaging in a magical battle on my front drive that was flashy enough to be seen in town."

  The color had drained out of Chapman's face again, and for a moment I wondered if he might've been the associate who'd summoned the boar for von Einhardt. Then he cleared his throat - third time - and said, "Yes, well, we had no opportunity to do any damage control…"

  He trailed off, perhaps recognizing the anger on my face. "You had no chance to clean up after yourselves, you mean? What would you have done, anyway?"

  "Oh!" He said, as my question seemed to give him some of his self-assurance back. "We have specially trained wizards who would have eliminated any physical evidence, erased or modified the memories of non-magical mortals…you know, general cleanup."

  He said it so breezily, with such certainty and with the absolute belief that it was their right to do so, that I was struck dumb for a moment with the horror of it. Erase or modify memories? And just how far would they go to eliminate physical evidence…or maybe even people who had seen too much to be safely 'cleaned up?'

  I had, I decided, learned everything about the ICOA that I really needed to know. I was never going to have a good relationship with these people. Their behavior leaned heavily into villain territory.

  Behind him, Penny growled very softly.

  He was still rambling, I realized, most of which I hadn't heard in my shock. "- because honestly, the only reason the ICOA hasn't stepped in and done anything about your family before now is due to how useful they were as neutral negotiators in the supernatural world."

  I'd had more than enough of this. "Mr. Chapman, let me be perfectly clear about something." I took two more steps forward, closing the distance between us and glaring up at him, forcing him to take a step back in surprise. "If anything happens to any citizen of the town of Oakwood that I think might have been caused by the actions of a member of the ICOA, I will take actions against your organization. Probably through the law offices of Summers & Winters, rather than directly."

  "But -" he began.

  "Anything," I said firmly, drawing the word out for emphasis, and resisting the urge to poke his chest. "Anything at all. The town of Oakwood is under my protection, and I take that responsibility very seriously indeed. That also goes for the clan of dusk foxes that the ICOA is holding enslaved with magical collars…they have a vassal agreement with my family, and the ICOA has violated that agreement."

  "It's an agreement that shouldn't have been made in the first place," Chapman said, possibly without thinking, "that's what my teachers said. Mortals shouldn't make agreements like that with residents of Faerie. We were just cleaning up a potential mess that never should have existed."

  This guy really wasn't on the ball. He'd just told me that not only was the ICOA holding Penny's family against their will, but that the ICOA was so familiar with the incident that they were teaching their apprentices about it. The sheer arrogance of it almost made my jaw drop.

  Penny growled louder, her upper lip curling back to show a hint of fangs this time, which made Chapman shy away from her.

  "Control your animal!" he snapped in a mixture of anger and fear.

  "She's no more an animal than you are…maybe less so," I said, aware that my anger was making me snarky and not really caring. Then I added, "She's certainly more intelligent."

  "Thank you, Caley," Penny said primly.

  He flinched when she spoke, making me wonder if the ICOA was teaching their younger members how intelligent dusk foxes really were. Or if they even cared.

  This time, when I spoke, I did poke Chapman's chest once with an index finger for emphasis. I know it was rude, but I was too angry to stop myself.

  "Go back to your superiors" I said coldly, "and give them my message, which I'll repeat so there are no misunderstandings: If anything happens to anyone in Oakwood that I even think might be because of them, I'll be coming for them through legal channels. If they don't release the dusk foxes they're holding against their will, I'll be having words with legal representation about the ICOA's breach of a vassal agreement. The town Oakwood and that clan of dusk foxes are under my protection…and so far, everything I've seen and heard about the ICOA makes you look like the bad guys."

  Chapman took another step back, lifting his cane. I felt the magic gathering there…and so did Sparkle, apparently, because suddenly she was human-sized and standing between me and Chapman, glowing balls of purple energy crackling in her hands. "And Caley is under our protection," she said, nodding past him to where Penny was now up on all fours and crouched to pounce, her muzzle set in a silent snarl. "You should go now."

  He looked absolutely shocked at Sparkle's sudden size change. For a moment, I thought we were actually about to throw down with him…then he backed off another step and nodded curtly. "I will deliver your message, Lady Reid." Then he muttered a word under his breath and vanished with a pop that I assumed was in-rushing air.

  The balls of energy in Sparkle's hands flashed and vanished as if they'd never been there, while Penny padded over. "We may have just made an enemy of them," she said softly. "But thank you for standing up for my kin."

  "As if Caley could have done anything else," Sparkle said firmly, bending and ruffling Penny's ears. Then she looked at me. "Right, Caley?"

  "Right, Sparkle," I said, taking a deep breath to settle my roiling stomach. "Wise or not, it was the right thing to do. To be honest, I suspect any good relations they had with my family were strained to begin with." I took another deep breath, let it out, then touched my left ear to make sure the earbud was still there. "Ken? Tell me you got that on video."

  "Audio and video, in crystal clarity, on three different cameras," Ken said. "And while I agree that it might not have been the wisest course of action, it was the right one."

  "Thank you, Ken," I said. His approval made me feel a bit better about what I'd done. "Please send a copy of the video to Summers & Winters immediately, but ask them not to take any action yet."

  "Consider it done," Ken said, his voice full of approval now. That course of action, at least, he liked.

  "And I think I'd better call D.T. and have her keep an eye open," I said. Then I looked at my friends and smiled. "Pile back in the car, you two, and let's get this thing parked. Then I'll call D.T.."

  As I climbed back into my little car, I realized that all of my good feelings from such a fantastic day were gone. There were thunderclouds on the horizon.

  Well…it had been a good day, anyway.