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Pike to go vigilante and get himself killed or thrown in jail.
    And if the police didn’t rush me out of town, they might just tell me to take out a restraining order on Trager, which wouldn’t do me any good if one of his unrestrained “people” decided to kill me. Barring those two options, Love and Payne might decide instead to tail me 24/7, which I would hate. I don’t like people watching me.
    I took another drink of coffee to cover my pause. Pike. First I’d talk to him, find out what the old Hound knew. Then I’d drag his stubborn hide down here to the police to make sure he was protected from Trager right along with me. If I was getting whisked out of town by the cops, Pike was coming with me.
    “So, just in case you need protection,” Love continued, “we want you to meet a few people on the MERC force. You have time now, yah?”
    “I guess.”
    “Good. Come on this way.”
    He stood, filling the free space in the room, and I stood too because even with the door propped open, the room suddenly felt much too small for the three of us. I stepped aside so Mr. Island Warmth could walk past me, and then grabbed my coat and exited the room right behind him. Payne followed, a blade of dark shadow on our heels.
    Love led us through the maze of cubicles again, and the tightness in my chest squeezed harder. Getting out of that room hadn’t done much good for my claustrophobia. Even here it seemed too small for so many people, and so many desks, and so many walls. There wasn’t enough air.
    I gritted my teeth and thought calm thoughts about big open fields and big open oceans and big open skies, where there was plenty of room and plenty of open and plenty of me breathing slowly and smoothly and not hyperventilating like a moron.
    Then we were out into the lobby, into high ceilings and echoes and room to breathe, and no more hyperventilation. A hall to the left took us to another door that was card-locked and also had a hell of a Diversion glyph on it. Most people probably wouldn’t even see the door with that big of a Diversion operating. Behind the door was a stairwell. We went down at least two flights, the only sound the squeak of Love’s right sneaker, the clomping of my boots, and the ghostly hush of Payne’s sensible loafers.
    Love stopped on a landing and turned toward a wall with a peeling paint job. It smelled strange here, a weird blend of hot epoxy and dill. Love pulled a card out of his pocket and held it waist high—as if there were some sort of scanner embedded in the flaking paint.
    And look at that, there was.
    A laser read his card, and then he fingered the motions to a glyph, which I couldn’t see since he was wide enough to block his hand and most of the stairwell from my view. He unlocked the Diversion glyph, and the wall with a crappy paint job became a wall with a door.
    “Buckle up, Beckstrom,” he said as he stepped through the open door. “You must be this tall to ride the ride.”
    I strolled into the room. Payne stepped in and locked the door behind us. I smelled the burnt epoxy stink of the Diversion spell snapping back into place as the door closed. Someone was doing a lot to keep this room beneath people’s notice.
    For good reason. The room was large, windowless, and crammed full of so much magic and magical equipment, I literally felt it like a punch to the gut. An ant-bite rashy tingle washed over my skin and made me want to scratch every inch of my body.
    As if that weren’t enough, magic twisted inside me, pushing against my bones, my muscles, my skin. My ears started ringing and the edges of my vision shaded. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind of the panic that was coming on fast. Panic was bad. Panic would make me lose control of the magic inside me.
    I am calm. Calm as a river. Calm as blue sky. I held still, intent on my own breathing. Inhale, exhale. I did not need to lose control of the magic inside me right here in front of the police. They’d have me