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The world barely existed as it moved around me. Magic wasn't common. In fact, it was quite rare, except for where it concentrated. In Denver that was Steel Link, Max's house, and to a lesser degree, Martin's.

The rest of the time, when I was out of my body, the world was faint outlines for the buildings and pale forms for the people. There was the occasional person radiating light, but they hadn't been in any patterns I recognized; which meant they belonged to a Faction I hadn't familiarized myself with yet. I left them alone, none of them glowed the way Damian did. All angry red in patches over their body.

Damian was almost entirely covered, while the men who'd attacked my company were only patches where they were marked.

I'd been doing this for a week now, letting someone drive me around while I was out of my body, looking around, because the alternative was staying in my office going insane from the lack of progress.

If the twins were still in the city, they were managing to avoid drawing attention. I'd grown desperate enough to hope I'd be able to pick up their red glow, but the effective range on my sight was a mile, and driving randomly hadn't given result other than the headache a few hours of this gave me.

I got back in my body and dry swallowed two aspirins.

"That's weird," the wolf behind the wheel commented.

"What is?" I asked, resting my head back.

"The way I could tell you weren't actually there. It's freaky. I mean not the weirdest thing I've seen since working for you, but this is up close." Leo was one of those who had been there when Steel Link had been attacked and who hadn't convinced himself what he'd seen had been a trick of the stress. So he'd been one of the people I'd explained things to. At least he hadn't freaked out when magic had been demonstrated.

"How can you tell?"

"Don't you know?"

"I'm outside of my body, I don't see details of it, and no one's ever commented on it before."

"It's unnaturally still. If not for the fact you keep breathing, I'd think you were one of those life-like mannequins that were popular a few years ago."

I smiled. "So I shouldn't do this in public?" I could just see Tom try to turn this into a show, get the cheetah to react! No, he wouldn't, maybe years ago, but now he was too much the paranoid protector for allow me to be in the open like that.

"Maybe if you start while no one's around they'll just think you're a statue, or one of those street performers."

I massaged my temples. "Maybe once this is over I'll give it a try. Let's head back. I'm not going to be able to step out again today."

* * * * *

The office was quieter than it had been since months before. The repairs had paused while Martin worked out a problem with the contractor, something about the amounts not matching, or something like that. I let him deal with that stuff for a reason.

The other reason was that a third of the Society recruits I'd had were gone; called back by their families. With a few who wanted to stay I tried to intervene, but I was a Rasia, so of course the fact I wanted them to stay was even more reason to remove them from my presence.

The sense I got was that those families hadn't believed me when I said I'd put their sons to work, that I'd train them to be effective as private security. Yes, I hadn't planned on being attacked, but they would have been in the line of fire eventually.

Jacob nodded to me, Louise glanced in my direction and continued working. The collie in my office, his back to the window meant I headed for the locker room and the second floor. I looked into the rooms that had been converted into storage for the attackers.

Doctor Merlin had been one of those who'd accepted the new truths of the world he lived in better than most. "I'm too fucking old to have to time to let that stuff bother me," the hyena had said, "And after working in a hospital, your tolerance for weird gets a lot higher."

He'd patched up the injured, and anyone marked was then put under a stasis phrase. Bunks had been set up, three high, and the still bodies put on them. None of them stirred. I'd tried to free one of them by burning the thread connecting him to the twins, and that had sent him into convulsions, and Doc Merlin had barely managed to keep him alive.

He was transfered to a hospital, where he was still in a coma. The doctors there couldn't explain what was wrong with him, and I wasn't telling them magic was involved. It had to be the marks. Unlike what Damian had done to the bear in the spring, these had to include some sort of safe guard to prevent freeing them.

Someone mentioned skinning the marks, but I vetoed that idea. If cutting the thread had almost killed one of them, there was no way to know what removing the marks would do.

I called Fred, and he told me the same thing he had the previous ten times.

"No, there isn't a phrase that lets us find someone we have nothing on. No, there is no phrase that lets us detect magic on the scale of a city, and if there was, there isn't enough cum in all the men in a city to write it."

What else could I do to postpone going to my office? I could join the guys having sex, but where else was there I could actually use as a justification?

Yeah, I was out of excuses.

* * * * *

Niclas Brukammer stood as I opened the door. "Where have you been?" he demanded in his accented English. "I have been waiting here for hours."

"Didn't anyone tell you I was out in the city, looking for the men who took your son?"

"And?"

I fell in my chair with a sigh. "And I haven't found them."

"How can you not find them? This is your city, is it not?"

"Unless you know of a way to track someone who doesn't want to be found, I'm doing the best I can. Their son didn't think to keep something like their cum in case they ran, and they knew to clean up any trace of their presence so my only option is walking the pavement. Does your ability lends itself to finding people?"

I felt for it as he glared at me. What I picked up was a sense of order, but without a demonstration, I had no idea what it did. I'd learned the hard way not to attempt tapping a power I didn't know what it did. It had taken a month to get the wall the explosion took out repaired.

"What does walking the pavement mean?"

"Mister Brukammer, don't you have more important things to do than be here?"

"Nothing is more important than finding my son," he stated.

I kept my mouth shut. Telling him to go wait at Max's wouldn't go over well I thought. "In this case, walking the pavement means me sitting in a car, out of my body and looking for any indication of magic. No, I haven't found anything that would look like their kind of magic."

"Why are the police not involved?"

I eyed him as my phone rang. "You do know they don't--" I looked at the display and Stephan's name came up. I almost answered it, but caught myself. Stephan had never called from his phone before. I didn't even know he still had it. I slotted it in the desk and tapped a message for the call to be traced before answering it.

I waited. I could hear someone breathing, but after ten seconds they hadn't spoken.

"Stephan?"

Niclas' eye grew wide.

"It's me."

Niclas erupted with German, standing, almost shouting. Anytime he paused, he had silence as a reply and he started up again.

"Enough!" I yelled over the collie. He turned his German shouting on me. I glared at him. "You're going to shut up right now, or I'm getting Colby to throw you out of the building."

Stephan chuckled. It was good to know that he could still appreciate the image of Colby bodily picking even his father up and throwing him.

Niclas didn't find it amusing. "I will not be told what to do when it comes to my son, you are not--"

"You're in my office, in my city. You want to do whatever you want? Go home and wait there for Stephan to call you. Stephan called me, not you, is that clear?"

"I will not leave."

"Then you're going to be quiet." I glanced at the desk, the call was still going. "Stephan, how are you doing?"

He let out a bark that under other circumstances might have been a laugh. "What does it even matter anymore?"

"It matters Stephan."

The silence was too long for my liking. "I'm alive, for what it's worth."

"How can I help you?" a message appeared on the desk. 'Trace done.' An address followed, with a map of Denver indicating where it was.

"You can't. I'm beyond redemption."

"Stephan, don't say--"

"It's true! Are you happen Father?"

The question surprised Niclas. He said something in German, it sounded tentative.

"Of course you don't get it. You never understood a damned thing. You never even tried!"

I looked at the address, at the ease with which we got it and took a chance. "Stephan, I know where you are."

"I figured you would. When the men stormed our hideout in Miami, they figured you'd trace the call. That you'd trace any call I'd make."

"They know you're calling me?"

There was a hesitation. "No. They're busy with something and I slipped away. I was counting on you finding out where I was. I can't do this anymore Denton. Can you... can you come and get me?"

"Yes, Stephan, I can."

"Thank-- You don't know what this means to me." The call disconnected.

I looked at the map, zoomed on the building. Tapped it and got some relevant information. It had been an apartment building, condemned for a few years. The city owned it, police raids happened there on a monthly basis. It could be a decent place to hide out, but I didn't think the twins would care for squalor, but if Stephan wanted to be rescued, it was an odd place to call from.

"What are you waiting on?" Niclas demanded.

If Stephan had given the twins the slip in the hopes to be rescued, the best place for him to go was somewhere public; where even if the twins realized he'd left they couldn't do anything without revealing themselves.

Which meant this was a trap.

I brought up Tom's number and called him.

"Brislow, what's happening?" behind him I could hear guns being fired.

"Assembled a strike force, nonlethal weapons only. Include Colby and anyone with some form of offensive or defensive ability I've practiced with."

"What are we doing?"

"We are going to rescue Stephan," I replied.

That he ultimately wants it or not.