Tempus Magic Read online

  “I told Director Gianrossi that you probably needed more training. I’ll see what we can make available to you.” He turned back to his computer, the monitor angled so I couldn’t peer over his shoulder.

  A moment later my email chimed. I skimmed the subject lines, mostly new hire type stuff about access, training, blah blah, etcetera etcetera. I spent half an hour logging in and changing my passwords wondering just how fruitless this all was because I’d already had this kind of access and used these systems already. Then again, I didn’t know how the director or my new partner—and I’d never worked with a partner before—would handle things and a sneaky suspicion told me that Tempus was far more “by the book” than I was used to dealing with.

  I completed playing with my passwords and taking the required training. The big rule seemed to be not to change the time instance and the other rule was that no one knew what would change the time instance. Really made a lot of sense, but hey I hadn’t been the person to come up with using magic to time travel.

  “You’ll see a couple new trainings. And there’s headphones in the top drawer.” Angelo said. He’d been so quiet, I wondered if he’d even been listening. Apparently he had been. I smiled. Good.

  “Oh really?” I feigned innocence and pulled out a cheap set of ear buds. “Really? The Musimagium couldn’t spring for something better?”

  My office-mate snorted. So he did have a sense of humor. “Once you get through those trainings, we’ll brief on Stormguard and then we’ll go to the future.”

  “The future. Okay. I better get my training in first.” I smiled at him, then returned my focus to the computer. More ho-hum training that looked as if it’d been created at least a decade ago. I wondered how often people had to watch these and hoped it was just this once.

  ~* * *~

  Angelo pointed to my chronometer. “Let me see what you got.”

  I thrust my wrist at him, wondering just how little he thought of me. I’d taken the training. I’d proven to him that I could set the chronometer. Even quick jaunts could change the time instance, so there wasn’t a boring part of history we could jump to just to prove that we could.

  “Very good. On the count of three.” He waited until I met his gaze and nodded. “With me. One. Two. Three.”

  I counted with him—we’d practiced that too—and as soon as the last “e” faded on three I hit the big flashy button on my chronometer. The world turned glowy. Like swirls of color that flashed past too quickly to name, but possibly something like the mural that had shifted to allow me entrance to Tempus. The urge to reach out and run my fingers through the colors, like playing in a rainbow, forced me to ball my hands at my sites. Don’t move. Angelo must have told me that a zillion times, as if by putting my hand through the rainbow, I could end up with my fingers chopped off in some unknown decade. I wanted to, though. The idea of playing in a rainbow fountain like a child appealed to me. Keeping my fingers overrode those urges.

  As quickly as the colors faded the world became clear. Nausea hit me. I doubled over, holding my stomach, and my gorge rose. I swallowed hard. Eww, that was nasty.

  “Easy,” Angelo said, his hand on my back. “It happens to all of us.”

  I drew a breath through my nose and slowly straightened. This wasn’t modern time or whatever the heck it was supposed to be called. The training didn’t cover something as obvious as that. Either way, there actually were flying cars. I watched them zip past impossibly tall buildings Antenna like something out of Telsa’s strange nightmares rose into the sky, tinted pink and purple by a vibrant sunset. “Where—” I knew the answer, so I shut my mouth and glanced at my chronometer. Stormguard’s last known location. Coidot, Missouri, 2175, a sleepy new suburb of St. Louis.

  Angelo closed his hand around my arm. “Remember. The smallest changes ripple outward. You don’t know what will be changed when we get back home.”

  “Got it.” Though frankly there were more than a few things I’d like to change like the hate crime that had killed my mother or maybe even the fact that I didn’t have an instrument. I didn’t ask Angelo what his instrument was. Maybe he didn’t have one either since my being a freak was what made me perfect for Tempus.

  “Focus,” he whispered. “We’re embarking.”

  That’s what they called it. Embarking on a time instance. We’d arrived in a park and I’d left it up to Angelo to determine where we’d appear. By his information, Stormguard occupied a warehouse seven blocks away. I’d let Angelo make the decisions because it was expected of me, but I needed to know. I’d been tracking Justus Stormguard for long enough that I should have had a say in this. Next time, I vowed.

  Angelo stepped forward onto the footpath and I followed. Our cover was to be bland and fit in and I wondered how we’d be able to do that when I didn’t even know what kind of clothes to wear. Thankfully, when I saw a group about my age walking past, their clothes weren’t too far from club wear. Either the style had come around again or some things never changed. I fit in. I suspected Angelo, in his suit, would stand more than I did.

  “We’re going to the location. Scouting, then falling back.”

  My stomach still wobbled, so the idea of flying through the technicolor goo so soon didn’t sound good at all. “We have a location?”

  “Yeah. His office.”

  “Ugh.” I promised my stomach a nice bowl of vanilla ice cream or maybe a cup of yogurt when we got back.

  “You’ll get used to it.” He chuckled. “We all went through this. Here we are.” He pointed at the building before us and ducked into the shadows.

  I followed him. The warehouse appeared like any other, even in my time. Gray cement blocks, small windows that probably were covered with dust and grime so we couldn’t see inside. A metal door, the same color as the building, faced the street. No signs identified it.

  This really didn’t look like a place Stormguard would operate out of. He preferred luxury, high rise apartments and people around him who ensured he had anything he’d ever wanted. Had the future really changed him so much? Considering that he came from the investigation I knew, I doubted it. I also knew when to keep my mouth shut. This was one of those times.

  A young woman wearing some kind of wildly patterned leggings, knee-high black boots, and a crop top that showed enough skin to be his type, came to the door. She knocked, the staccato taps echoed in the empty street. The air smelled clean. Like really fresh after a rain clean, which seemed odd for a city of any size. Night fell and the quit hit me with the force of a sledgehammer. No engines, cars, trucks, honking horns, loud music…none of the noise pollution as if I were out on a mountain somewhere, far away from people.

  The door opened and the woman entered, the clang of the metal door closing jarringly loud. For the briefest of moments, the flash of strobe lights, a bit of music and I realized what we were staring at wasn’t a warehouse at all, but a club and that was the kind of place I’d expect Stormguard.

  “We’re not dressed for this. Or you’re not.” I turned to Angelo.

  “I—”

  I shushed him, hearing now the throbbing bass beat of a wicked DJ as it vibrated through the ground and into the souls of my feet. I reached for the music, my magic rising to meet it. Notes coiled inside me like weapons ready to be fielded. Energy poured into my body and I reveled in the sensations of every molecule in my body responding to the sound, delighting in it, becoming it. Had I tried, I could have snatched the bass line from the very air and used it as a whip to cut through concrete and steel. This was what I did. I turned music into a weapon.

  A hand touched my arm. I flinched, hand raised ready to send some of that power at whoever dared to lay a finger on me. Then, I registered that it was Angelo and the slight shake of his head told me I was getting too wrapped up in the music.

  “Snare.”

  The one word pulled me out of it. I sensed, then, the magic pulling at my soul, at my essence to try and drag it from my body. Stormguard had learned from our previous encounters, the way that he could use magic to manipulate, to pull people in. They called him a Trickster, a form of magic user that the books never discussed and everyone prayed didn’t exist. I clamped my palms over my ears so the only music I heard was the lub-dub of my own heartbeat and the swish of blood in my veins.

  One deep breath. Two. The artificially clean air gave me nothing to focus on and the lack of city noises provided no anchors as a counterpoint to the music. Was this why he chose this time? Because we’d succeeded in purifying our environments so well that attacks like this could happen? Each breath returned me to my body and now, I tuned out the pounding beat coming in through the ground.

  “Those boots aren’t regulation, are they?”

  I didn’t need to answer. Regulation shoes—though I didn’t think Angelo’s Italian Leather loafers were either—had a super thin layer of metal in the soles that blocked such vibrations and insulated the wearer against the ground. I loved these boots though and they’d been a gift from my mother.

  “We’re going back.”

  “No!” I glanced around, but no one had heard me. I didn’t know what the regulations were in this time and I didn’t want to bring any attention to us. “We’ve got to see if that’s Stormguard.”

  A woman stumbled out of the building, her bright pink dress barely covering her and teetering on matching pink heels so high I wondered how she even could walk. She did too, because she grabbed the side of the building and wobbled against it, putting one shaky leg in front of the other. A party, music, I’d have suspected she imbibed too much. Something about her glassy eyes, the way she looked around as if she were trying to figure out how she got here and where to go made me discard that. Drugs, perhaps? Stormguard dabbled in a bit of everything, though his favorite intoxicant was his magic.

  “She’s music drunk,” I whispered. “It’s him.” Without waiting for permission, or backup, I stepped onto the sidewalk, drew just enough power to cast a glamour, then sauntered across the street as if I didn’t have any care in the world. Instead of a muscular, short Asian-looking woman, I was short, blonde, and very clearly looking for a good time. My glamour extended down to my clothing, my black leather pants and jacket, the black silk blouse beneath replaced by a skintight cat suit. My boots turned into heels, and though I didn’t show any skin, everything I had was on display. I sensed Angelo’s hesitation, then he followed me, and when I glanced over my shoulder he’d donned a glamour that would have the women eating out of his hand. I reminded myself he was my co-worker, a fellow agent, and besides, after my girlfriend dumped me last month, the last thing I wanted was a relationship with anyone—of any gender.

  The woman wobbled off down the sidewalk and hailed a flying cab, getting into it to leave, by the time we reached the door. I knocked. Frustration rolled off of Angelo. I dismissed it. Whatever.

  Pain split my head open, or at least it felt that way. I grabbed my temples, doubled over, and tried not to retch right there on the sidewalk. Damn, this was getting to be a habit and not a pleasant one—me trying not to puke in the future. Angelo grabbed my arm and dragged me backwards.

  “You didn’t check for traps,” he growled in my ear. “We’re going.”

  Just as I thought I was getting some air the crazy color swirls burst around us and I had a sensation of falling, falling, never reaching the end. My skin flashed hot, then cold. Everything stopped. Hard. Like slamming into a wall going a hundred miles an hour and having your body flung around like a crash test dummy hard. Something cool and solid hit my cheek. Distantly, I registered it as the floor, then my stomach heaved and I couldn’t restrain myself. I vomited all over my office.

  A cool cloth brought me around and I blinked with the horrible, embarrassing realization that I must have blacked out. I tasted sour bile and the remnants of last night’s ramen. I grimaced.

  “Take it easy. You got time shook.” Angelo’s voice penetrated my haze.

  “Time what?” I pushed myself upright, thankfully not seeing any of the evidence that I’d gotten sick, and sat. Sweat rolled suddenly down my forehead and my clothes were too tight, too restrictive, and I struggled to draw breath.”

  “Here.” He hummed a few notes, something that reminded me of cool ocean breezes that played with your hair.

  I breathed deeply, relaxing for the first time since we’d gotten back. “Wow. Thanks,” I whispered as strength returned to my limbs. “What happened?”

  “You triggered something and I had just enough time to sense it and pull you back before…”

  “Before what?” I forced myself to stand, though I wobbled like a newborn colt on my feet. Thankfully, I found my chair and slumped into it. “Thanks for…” I gestured to the floor.

  “It happens to all of us. You didn’t get as sick as most. This is my fault. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with a partner, and I should have probably told you what I’d planned for the mission and how I wanted to handle things. I guess you didn’t have a partner over at Armis.”

  I shook my head, then instantly regretted it. “No.” I let the answer drop between us. I didn’t do the buddy cop sort of thing.

  “I thought we would just do a bit of recon, see what was happening, before coming back. But you stepped into it, so now he knows we’re onto him. I think we need to go back as soon as possible and stop his ability to travel through time.”

  I wanted to laugh and tell Angelo a big fat duh because that’s what we were assigned to do, or so I thought. I reached for my coffee mug and realized that I hadn’t even had time to unpack it. Intro to time travel and then thrust into the future. Because sending new employees out half untrained always ended well. I sighed. Seemed like Tempus had the same issues Armis did, a hell of a lot of arrogance and a disregard for its people. Lovely.

  “Can I get a glass of water or something?” I picked my mug from the top of my box.

  Angelo took it. “You’re too weak at the moment. Water or coffee?”

  “Coffee. Dab of milk or whatever you guys have here. None of that powered creamer crap.”

  “Coming right up.” He paused. “Look, I’m sorry. I should have known better.”

  I sensed some demons behind those words and I wasn’t surprised. Most of us in Armis had seen our fair share of bad things, and Tempus most likely wasn’t much different. I nodded, my way of saying it was okay and counted the moments until he returned with my coffee. While I waited, I thought over the moments before Angelo had pulled us back. Stormguard preferred to operate on his own terms, but setting traps had never been his style. I frowned and though my head swam when I picked up my box and put it on my desk, I rummaged through it until I found the notebook where I’d been keeping track of the case. I scribbled today’s date according to my chronometer and the notes of what happened.

  Angelo set my coffee down in front of me. “What’s that?”

  “My notes on Stormguard.”

  “You have notes? Why didn’t you share them with me?”

  I grinned behind my coffee cup and took a good, long drink. Okay, maybe a bit too much milk, but someone brought me coffee. I wasn’t going to complain. “You didn’t ask.” My cup clinked softly against the desk. I’d probably need a coaster or something. These white surfaces would show coffee rings like crazy.

  “Why isn’t it all in the computer?” He grabbed his chair from his own half of the partitioned desk and pulled it over. “Okay. We probably got off on the wrong foot here. Tell me what you didn’t put in your case files.”

  “I bet you were an academy kid. Maybe even Melody or perhaps one of the fancy boarding schools along the east coast where the teachers can trace their lineage to before the Revolutionary War and everyone wears a uniform with the Musimagium crest on it because it looks stylish. Then, they brought you right here and you’ve been traveling through time ever since. Because if you were Armis, you’d know why we all keep notebooks and what goes into the case files is a highly sanitized version of the truth.”

  Angelo stared at me as if I’d pole axed him between the eyes. “I went to Milan Central until my father disappeared on a mission and my mother moved us to America. We couldn’t afford private school so I went to Dubuque Public Schools because my mother got a job there as their band and choir instructor. She loved music, but lacked the magic. Apparently the Musimagium had been keeping an eye on me, because my senior year when I was singing in jazz choir at All-State a guy walked up to me, told me he was with the Musimagium, and I had a full ride scholarship to Gemini Locus. That was when my mother told me what my father was and that I’d inherited his talent. I joined Tempus so I could find him, if he’s still alive.”

  Talk about open mouth and insert foot. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. Let’s just say if you are lost or die in the line of work, your family will never have to worry again. My mother refused the money and cried the day I came home and told her what had happened. She also told me that if I didn’t accept the Musimagium would hunt me down and ensure I never could use the powers I had. So it was either join or die, metaphorically. I’m not giving up on my father, but he earned that pension, so if I dress nicely sue me. Now, tell me about your notes.”

  Chapter Three

  God, I’d put my foot in it. I did that sometimes. Okay, often, and that’s why I worked on my own and tracked down bad guys. Armis tended to overlook my tactless sarcasm because I brought results. I hope Tempus did the same thing. At least he graciously accepted my apology and I went over my notes. He updated the computer files, bringing his laptop over to my desk to add the notes. I didn’t ask why he didn’t keep his own notebook. Apparently he wanted everything in the computer in case he didn’t come back.