Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2) by Kal Aaron (ebook reader for manga .txt) 📗

“Okay, that’s not totally crazy,” Lyssa said, “but how do you get from pranks to abandoned mines? What’s the connection? I feel like we’re all missing something obvious, and I wasn’t cool and with it even when I was that age.”

“A pivot to haunted history was supposed to help them out, from what he said,” Damien replied. “He mentioned copying other channels that were doing that kind of thing. From what he explained, paranormal stuff’s all the rage since the five-year M-Day anniversary. It’s really hard for any of these guys to land interviews with or get real news about Sorcerers, but it’s easy to fill their channels with videos about magic and ghosts and garbage like that. It’s like a cheap way of co-opting the Society and the Illuminated to make money. People eat it up.”

“Really? Why do I feel like an old lady all of a sudden?” Lyssa groaned. “I’m a fossil at thirty.”

Damien laughed. “It’s okay. We’re both fossils.”

“Let’s think about this with our old-timey brains, then,” Lyssa said. “Why would two college kids from California decide to start their haunted history quest in that specific old Arizona mine? Are you telling me there are no abandoned gold mines they could have visited in the land of the ’49 Gold Rush?” She offered Damien an incredulous look. “I didn’t see anything in my initial checks about the copper mine having any sort of haunted history, and Samuel didn’t mention it either.”

Lyssa was confident the Elder wasn’t holding back. His story about the OK Corral connection proved he was willing to share anything even tangentially related.

The Society had been good at hiding the truth of incidents in the past, but there was always something that leaked through, a legend, a myth, or a ghost story. That explained why the world didn’t have much trouble accepting sorcery after M-Day.

Damien nodded. “Same here. From what I could find, the mine closed down because it ran dry a long time ago, but it didn’t have a bad safety record or any unusual deaths associated with it.” He grinned. “I wondered if the two were just going to lie and try and make up a fake Blair Witch-style documentary history for the place, but I agree with you. It’d make more sense for them to hit the more famous allegedly haunted places in the state than that particular mine.”

“Which means the real question isn’t why they pivoted to haunted history. The question is why they started there.” Lyssa narrowed her eyes. “Maybe we need to do a little good cop, bad cop.”

“What do you mean?” Damien asked, looking nervous. “Neither of us is a cop.”

“Close enough. You might be an EAA agent, but in the end, that makes you a fancy fed and probably in this kid’s mind, someone to whom he shouldn’t admit doing anything too illegal.”

Damien nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense. And how do you fit into that?”

“Seeing Hecate up close and personal might convince him there are worse things than going to jail,” Lyssa replied. “Loosen up the tongue.”

“You want to terrorize the victim?” Damien shook his head. “That’s a bad idea, Lyssa. The higher-ups in the EAA will be pissed if I sign off on anything like that. I don’t like it, and it’d cause trouble for both of us short- and long-term.”

“Of course not. I’m trying to find the bastard who made the monster that killed his friend and almost killed him.” Lyssa rolled her eyes. “You’re right. I don’t know this kid did anything but follow up on a tip, but he’s our main lead.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. We can work this a different way. The goal isn’t to freak him out; it’s just to get him to talk. I think someone set this poor bastard up, and I want to find out who did it and punish them.”

“What do you have in mind specifically?” Damien shifted forward, his eyes alight with new interest. “If it doesn’t involve you trying to freak him out, I might be able to help.”

“I’ve gotten a lot of good PR recently,” she replied. “All sorts of nice national stories about how I can take out a house full of cartel thugs and rogues.”

“Okay.” Damien nodded. “Still not following you. What’s your exact plan?”

“I might be wrong about why he doesn’t want to talk to you,” Lyssa said. “It might be less that he’s afraid of going to jail and more that he’s afraid of a Sorcerer melting his brain if he says anything. Having Hecate the famous Torch show up and vow to track down the guy if he gives us the information might make him feel a little better. He’ll know the Society has his back even if a Sorcerer is involved.”

Damien took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Okay. If you promise to go with that angle, I’ll make sure you don’t get any blowback, but absolutely no freaking out the kid for the sake of the case or doing the ‘I’ll swallow your soul’ bit.”

Lyssa snorted. “We just need to give him an excuse to tell the truth. He almost got killed, and his friend ended up being monster food. On some level, he must want someone to know the truth. He’ll want someone punished over this, and he’ll want closure. But I think the best plan is for me to do this alone, so he thinks the government won’t be involved.

“Please don’t disturb the other patients,” Damien said. “The last thing some guy who just had a heart attack needs to see is a woman in a skull mask.”

Chapter Sixteen

Cloaked in her wraith form, Lyssa crept through the shadows in the hospital parking lot. She’d waited until nighttime before driving to the regional county hospital that was treating Lucky Nardi. Damien had given her Lucky’s room number. The victim was recovering on the third floor.

After rematerializing her arm to check a floor plan on the