At the Shark Tank Tristis made a beeline for the door beside the bar. The bouncer there recognized him, and it wasn't long before he was being escorted through the backrooms and then upstairs to Rastane's inner sanctum.

  The money counters were gone, and in their place were two stern-looking guards. Though he'd already been patted down at the stairs, they went through the process again before letting him pass.

  In Rastane's office there were two more armed guards, and the man himself was clearly wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit. He was already at the liquor station and put on a forced smile when Tristis entered.

  "Mister Montgomery! It's always a pleasure to see you. You take your whiskey neat, don't you?"

  "Not tonight," he replied as he got seated.

  "More for me then." Rastane took both glasses back to his desk but remained on his feet.

  The man was already drunk. He could smell his breath from here.

  "I trust that the transfer for Miss Gascoigne's mother went well?" Rastane said. "I made sure she got the premium service."

  He wasn't in the mood for small talk. "Why are you having me followed?"

  Rastane's face twisted like he'd just spat in his soup. "What ever gave you that idea, my boy?"

  "Did you think I wouldn't notice? We had an agreement to stay in our separate worlds."

  Rastane took up one of the glasses and downed it in one gulp. But it still wasn't enough to completely steady his nerves.

  "My collectors ran into a problem last week," Rastane explained. "Some of my clients can be a bit hot-headed at times, but they all know how the business works. We never get any real trouble. But this time things took a turn."

  Rastane absentmindedly rubbed his chest as if remembering old wounds. "One of my men ended up in hospital. Burns. All over. The other one was a lot luckier."

  "Your client attacked them?" he asked. Then added, "What does this have to do with me?"

  Rastane cast a suspicious eye over him. Even when intoxicated, the man never lost the calculating edge. But maybe it was this same quality that was keeping the drink from rinsing all the tension out of his bones.

  "The lucky one came back to me. He described the incident in detail. And he swore up and down that the fire came out of the client's hands."

  Tristis's blood ran cold, and Rastane's eyes narrowed. He didn't think he'd given away a tell, but now the businessman's eyes were fixed sharply on him as he continued his explanation.

  "I sent some men to follow up on the client, but he was gone. Taken in by the police, according to his neighbors. But you know, a man like me, I like to have a lot of friends. So I asked around, and none of the local precincts know what happened to him. It wasn't them that had taken him in."

  He had a bad feeling about where this was going.

  "I went to visit my man in the hospital," Rastane continued. "He was gone. Taken away against the doctors' wishes. Those burns still needed extensive treatment. Then I find that the lucky one had also been taken into custody. I hired a lawyer to get my men out. But apparently there's nothing she can do. I ask her for details but she refuses to tell me because technically I'm not her client. Even though I'm the one paying her bill."

  Rastane took the second glass and gulped it down. "I understand that you've studied a bit of law yourself, Mister Montgomery. And you may agree that she's following her duty to her clients. But then can you tell me why her clients, my employees—both of them—would ask the lawyer to keep me from knowing about their situation? Wouldn't the one thing they want most be my help in setting them free?"

  There was only one reason he could think of. The government of Charais Gamor knew about magic and was keeping it suppressed.

  "Every time I think about these events," Rastane continued, "do you know the whose name my mind keeps turning back to, Mister Montgomery?

  "I had nothing to do with what happened to your men," he said firmly.

  "But what you did here—" Rastane tapped his own chest. "That can be called nothing less than magic. A man summons fire from his own hands. That is also magic. But one of these acts of magic got everyone rounded up."

  Rastane settled into his chair, reached over for his cigar case, pulled out a cigar, and set the tip into a cutter.

  "I'd rather you didn't smoke," Tristis said.

  The businessman gave him a smug look was able to cut the cigar anyway when somewhere deep in his brain, in a part where the alcohol hadn't soaked through to yet, a signal must have cut through the fog. His hand hesitated. The cigar slid back into the box.

  Rastane pushed the box away and smiled obsequiously at him. "Maybe you would be so kind as to offer up some answers."

  Tristis saw an opportunity here. All Rastane knew was that one magic user had been detained and one had not. He could play into the idea that he remained free because he was an insider. It wasn't so far-fetched, considering his family connections.

  "I think you already have a good enough understanding of what's going on," he said. "You should erase this entire matter from your mind."

  Rastane took a moment to consider his reply. "My men are good workers. Loyal. They can be trusted not to talk about what they saw."

  "You really care enough about these men to negotiate their release?" he said skeptically.

  "I look after all my workers," Rastane said.

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  The way he said it was so persuasive, Tristis might have believed him had he not already got a glimpse of the man's true nature at their last meeting.

  "I'm afraid I can't help you with that," he replied.

  Rastane burst into laughter. It was that same hideous raucous laughter that he remembered. When it mercifully died away, the man's eyes had changed. "You had me going there for a moment, my boy."

  Tristis realized his mistake only after it was too late. The question about freeing the goons had been a trap meant to catch him out in his lie. He'd been lured into a false sense of security by the other man's drunkenness. Had he been on his guard, he would have put more thought into questioning why Rastane would even bring it up.

  "Had you really been an insider," Rastane said, "you wouldn't have had to beg me to clear your girlfriend's debt. You wouldn't have had to reveal your magic to me. And you wouldn't have looked so worried when you heard about the fire mage. No, my boy, I think that if they learned about you, you'd just as likely end up beside my men."

  Rastane was right. He'd been foolish to try to trick him at all. All the scattered pieces of his past had exposed too many holes in his ruse.

  But he had to keep his mind in the game. Rastane was saying all this for a reason. Setting him up to be taken advantage of. All off the threat of revealing his magic to the authorities.

  He had to strike back.

  "You're trying to project your own insecurities onto me," he said. "Your goons were locked away because they know about the fire mage. But you know about it too. One of them told you, and you're afraid he'll tell the people holding him, and they'll come for you."

  Rastane smiled. "I suppose we're both exposed here."

  "Does this mean we're back to our original agreement?" he said. "You stay in your world and I'll stay in mine?"

  "Are you really all right leaving it like this?" Rastane asked.

  "You don't have as much to worry about as you think," he replied. "The agency holding your men, they'd have assumed you'd already been told. If that was enough for them to come for you, they'd have done so by now. You can protect yourself by not giving them any more reason to change their mind."

  "Just don't talk about it, you mean?" Rastane said thoughtfully. After a moment he added, "Very well, Mister Montgomery. I can assure you that my men won't be bothering you anymore."

  When Tristis left the Shark Tank, there was a man waiting by his car. This wasn't a regular goon off the streets. Everything about him screamed military police. From the buzz cut to the broad shoulders hidden beneath the faded trench coat to the way his eyes looked him up and down like he was watching a cocker spaniel bounding over to claim a toy.

  "Nice car for a young'un," the man said. He was standing beside the driver's side door so Tristis couldn't get in.

  "My parents are well off," he replied, looking around the parking lot. It felt like there were other sets of eyes watching them.

  "You'll have to come back for it later. I need you to come with me." The man pulled his coat aside just enough to reveal a badge pinned to the inside. Gendarmerie.

  This didn't come as a surprise to him, as after everything Rastane had told him, of course the authorities had the businessman under surveillance.

  He followed the officer down the street where there was a driver waiting for them in an unmarked car. They both slipped into the back, where the officer kept a close watch on him.

  "Can you tell me what this is about?" he asked.

  "You'll find out when we get there," the officer replied.

  He didn't think they'd eavesdropped on his conversation with Rastane. They wouldn't be treating him so lightly otherwise. It could just be routine, or maybe they were hoping to use him to get to Rastane.

  He was taken to a secure gendarmerie compound. These were more tightly guarded than a regular police station. It felt like a military base, and in a way that's because it was.

  Once again Tristis found himself in an interrogation room. He'd been spending far too much time in these lately.

  More than an hour passed before someone finally showed. The woman looked like she'd gotten dressed in a hurry. Considering that it was close to midnight, she must have been in bed when they'd called her in.

  This way he knew he was about to get the VIP treatment. They didn't just give him any interrogator. They'd called her in special.

  The woman plopped a briefcase beside by her chair, set her steaming cup of coffee down, settled into her seat, and offered her hand across the table. "I'm the deputy director of the DSI. You can call me Virginie."

  The Gamorese intelligence service. Deputy director meant that she was right there at the top. It didn't get more serious than this.

  He shook her hand. "Tristis. May I ask why I've been detained?"

  "Let's cut to the chase, Tristis. What we want to know is: What are you?"

  Her directness caught him off guard. He defaulted to his elevator pitch. "I'm an executive manager at my family's firm that provides oversight for the other enterprises that we operate."

  "You know that isn't what I meant," she snapped.

  He pulled back. He'd been expecting a more subtle approach from a master interrogator.

  His instinct was to demand a lawyer. But to stonewall them could mean having the DSI on his tail, and he'd only just gotten Rastane off it. It would jeopardize his master's mission. He had to play along.

  "I have the right to know why I'm being detained," he said.

  "You already know why."

  He'd already decided on the way here that they didn't have anything on him. She had to be fishing. "The officer who brought me here didn't tell me why you'd picked me out. I haven't done anything wrong."

  The spymaster pulled a folder from her briefcase and opened it up to show an assortment of printed documents that looked like they'd been thrown together in a hurry. She tossed it unceremonious on the table between them.

  "You believe you have secrets from us," she began, "but you don't really. Kids like you believe that your family's station provides you with protection, but it doesn't. You're used to others bowing your way and overlooking your slights, and you believe that's how it will work with everyone. But not with us. Quite the opposite in fact. To us, the more important a person—the more prominent—the more scrutiny they deserve. Because Charais Gamor is a republic, and we serve the people and not some aristocracy. And it isn't the common worker whose betrayal can do the most damage, but the leaders." She leaned forward. "The executive managers."

  He glanced down at the documents on the table. The front page had his photo and some biographical details. It had his current address and the date he moved in. His car and when he bought it. One of the other scattered pages seemed to be flight logs.

  He reminded himself that none of that mattered. She had nothing on him. If she did, she wouldn't be fishing.

  "You think I'm just fishing," she continued. "You think it means that I don't know anything worthwhile. You probably learned that from TV or the internet. You think that just because we do things a certain way when we've got nothing, it must always mean we have nothing when we do it that way. But we do it this way for everyone. Because it's just a part of the process. It's what works best."

  She's still fishing, he told himself. It's all just mind games. She still hadn't said anything of substance.

  "Do you know what the biggest problem with torture is, Tristis?" she asked. Then she quickly added, "This isn't a threat. We aren't going to torture you. I've never been a fan of it. Do you know why?"

  "It doesn't work," he replied.

  "Wrong. It does work. That's why we use it. You torture someone enough, they'll tell you everything you want to hear. But that's precisely the problem. It works too well."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm in the business of catching terrorists. Every terrorist, under torture, will confess. But I'm not in the business of hurting innocent people. And every innocent person, under torture, will also confess. You see how that's a problem for me, don't you, Tristis?"

  "Yeah, it's as good as useless," he replied.

  "Not quite useless. Because you see, in all my years in this job, do you know what I'd never had anyone confess to being?" She leaned forward. "A witch."