Would my name, and the other guys’, be up there next to Rose’s some day? The idea made me feel giddy and a little itchy at the same time. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted the bureaucrats inside that industrial-looking building cataloguing our relationship. It was ours, not theirs.
I left the outer rim of the network behind and dug into the Consorting Advisership’s locked section. Chip, chip, chip, crack! Nothing to it.
The wall crumbled away, leaving me staring at a vast array of data—completed consort ceremonies, new applications, interviews conducted, follow-up communications sent, and on and on.
A sick sort of curiosity prickled at me. I found myself typing out Rose’s name, even though I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy seeing the information that was associated with her in here right now.
Several files came up—all of them for her and that Derek asshole, of course. The initial declaration of intent to consort. Her stepmother’s filing that she would conduct the ceremony. Notes from an interview when the advisers had come to the estate last month.The couple meets the criteria for a solid and stable partnership. No concerns noted.
Solid and stable my ass. These people had magic—you’d think they’d be able to pry hard enough to discover one of the people in that partnership was planning on turning the other into a slave.
Anger rippled through my chest, but I had to tune that out. I was working to get Rose out of that mess right now. Which meant I had to get down to the real work.
Studying a few of the standard forms, I figured out a way to quickly search for any that might have involved more than two partners. That effort turned up zero results. Determining whether there was any standard record of a witch taking someone outside the witching world as a consort was trickier, but after coming at the subject from several angles, I felt I’d covered every possible base.
The only differently labeled consorting records I found mentioned a “soul-bound” ceremony. The notes on them seemed to indicate it was something more intense than the regular consort ceremonies. They required a lengthier interview and follow-ups reporting on the witch’s magic, which apparently was more powerful afterward. But hardly any of those had happened in the last hundred years.
Why not? The records didn’t offer much of a clue. I’d have to ask Rose when I got back. If there was a way we could offer her even more strength, I was all for it.
I found no accounts of a witch consorting with more than one man, or with a non-witching man, any time since the Advisership had started keeping their records this way—back to the ‘30s. I guessed they’d digitized hard copy records going back that far to account for all witches still living.
But if any witches still living had done either, Rose probably would have known about it anyway. I couldn’t reach the paper records they might have in storage from earlier times from my computer… and the thought of trying to search through those manually made my head hurt. But I’d do it if I had to. I’d bet I could clone a security card to get into the building if it came to that.
I wasn’t quite at that point yet, though. A few times my searches had nudged up against another wall within the Advisership’s archives. I’d like to know what lay on the other side of that.
This wall was a little better built. It took me fifteen minutes to crack through instead of five, but then I was in. It didn’t look like the section I’d opened up was part of the Advisership’s domain after all, just a subsection adjacent to their operations. The documents I came across first were all marked as security reports by the Assembly’s “Justice Division.” The people I guessed Rose was hoping to turn asshole Derek and possibly her father over to. What kinds of “justice” had they needed to do when it came to past consort relationships?
I opened up a couple of the files. The first one was an account of domestic violence between a witch and her consort. She’d battered him badly enough that he’d needed medical attention. The witch had been sentenced to two year’s imprisonment while she waited out the remaining time before the consort bond could be safely severed. Then she’d been put under a spell that prevented her from touching anyone—to regain her powers through hooking up with them or to hurt them—for ten years after that. Fair enough, but nothing that related to Rose’s case.
The second one was a broken consorting. The man had delayed and delayed the ceremony only to outright cancel it at the last moment before his fiancée’s twenty-fifth birthday. Too late for her to find someone else. With her spark unkindled, she’d lost her magic. The Assembly’s Justice Division had ruled that the man had entered the engagement in bad faith and required he offer his former partner a big payoff in restitution.
My stomach twisted. That could have been the fate that Rose would have faced if she’d had to leave Derek but hadn’t been able to turn to us. How could any amount of money compensate for losing the powers you were born to wield?
As I nudged at the code, I caught another barrier, well-disguised even within this closed section of the network. An even deeper sublevel with very limited access granted—unless you happened to know how to finagle your way into that access.
What kind of records would they want to keep super-secret, for only select member’s eyes? That was something I definitely needed to know.
And whoever had set up this secure section really didn’t want me to know. I prodded and poked at the code, my mouth slanting into a frown. They’d gotten someone who actually knew what they were doing to build this wall for them. I’d get in, no doubt about that, but it was going to take more time and effort than the first two layers.
I set the laptop downloading the files from the less secure section so I could go over them later at my leisure, and then I took a quick break. The walk across the coffee shop and the steam of a fresh cup of coffee helped reset my brain. Then I dove back in.
Test for a weak spot here. Jiggle this potential backdoor there. Nope, nope—ah ha. A little loophole hardly anyone ever thought to plug. I wriggled my way in, and a new but small set of files appeared before me. What did we have here?
Before I could open any up, a movement across the street caught my eye. Two middle-aged men in what looked like posh law enforcement uniforms had emerged from the Assembly building. They headed straight across the street with an air as if they expected the traffic to dodgethem.
My skin tightened. They were heading straight toward the coffee shop. There shouldn’t be any way anyone could know I’d snuck into their network, but suddenly I had a very, very bad feeling about this.
I knew computers, but I didn’t know magic. The witches in the Assembly could be capable of detecting all kinds of things I hadn’t considered. Shit.
I had to get out of here, but I couldn’t leave without some idea of what I’d just found. My fingers darted over the keyboard, instructing my computer to download all the files in the super-secret section I’d gained access to.
Trying to look as if I’d simply finished the work I’d come here to do, I eased the laptop shut, tucked it into my shoulder bag, and slung that behind me so it wouldn’t be obvious. Then I grabbed my latest cup of coffee. If I veered over to the counter first...
I swung past the order pick-up area and then headed toward the door as if I’d just popped in for take-out. The two law-enforcement-looking dudes came in when I was halfway there. My heart thudded, but I glanced over them as if they were just a strange sight, not anything I associated with myself.
Keep breathing evenly. Don’t clutch the strap of the bag too tightly. I was on my way out anyway, not fleeing for my life.
Whatever had brought the guys across the street, it obviously hadn’t allowed them to pinpoint the culprit in any more detail. They glanced at me and my cup of coffee and then moved on. I didn’t stick around to find out how they were going to try to narrow down their search. The second I was out of view of the windows, I hustled right round the block and hailed the first taxi I saw.