Chapter 1

The crime scene was located in suburbia Virginia, in a nondescript middle-class cul de sac. I pulled up in my beige sedan as a team of agents with "FBI" on their windbreakers were loading up. They all gave me one look. None of them gave me a second. I try to be unworthy of second glances, both through my attire and a few magical charms. I'm six foot one, lean without being too thin, and have a face that's instantly forgettable. It was a warm sunny day; too pretty to need my special abilities.

"Hey Bishop." I turned to see an agent talking to two women, both lookers, both in their late teens or early twenties.

"Hey Charlie." Unlike me, Charlie only has a little of "The Gift". Just enough to get a "hunch" once in a while and to know when to call in me or someone like me.

My name is Bishop. That's not a first name or a last name or even a title. It's a codename. Some magical theorists over at the National Security Agency came up with the idea that throwing around your given name might give a bad guy a better chance of learning your secret name. Which is not a good thing for an agent wielding magic. So when I joined the Bureau they gave me a list of randomly generated code names to pick from. Bishop was my automatic choice. I prefer to handle problems from an angle rather than straight on. Plus, I'm just a notch below being the King. Good enough to be a chief research assistant, but not good enough to be the project head of my own research. I've gotten over that by now. Being a field mage for the Bureau let's me be my own boss. Plus I get to see lots of interesting things.

Charlie left the two women standing talking to themselves and joined me. "Missing person case here. Three co-eds at the local college sharing this house. Third roommate was in the backyard. When her roommates called her in for lunch, she had disappeared."

I rubbed my chin, thinking to myself that I needed a shave. "So? What's that got to do with me, Charlie?"

"Follow me." Charlie led me into the backyard where I could see a hole in the ground and part of the back fence was missing. Then it struck me. The missing portion was a perfect cube. The sides and bottom of the hole were smooth as glass.

I whistled. "Forensics find anything?"

"Nothing in the realm of science," Charlie replied. "And the roommates never heard a sound. Neither did any of the neighbors. With that and the shape of the hole, I figured the best thing I could do was call you in."

I closed my eyes and did a quick reading. This was complicated magic. Nothing an amateur could have pulled off. We were dealing with a major player. "The disinformation team here yet?"

"Just around the corner, Bishop. They wanted you to get whatever you needed from the scene before they moved in."

I nodded and started collecting samples. The government's official position is magic exists but the public doesn't need to know that magic exists. Not just our government. That's pretty much the position of all governments. And from what I can tell, the public is happier and safer that way.

For the record, the gnomes in Zurich don't run the world economy. But they do have someone sitting on all the boards of the major corporations.

I collected dirt samples, air samples, and bits of the fence. I nodded to Charlie to let him know he could call the disinformation team in. Then I climbed in my sedan and drove to my lab in West Virginia.

The road leading up to Bureau's east coast magical facilities looks like a dirt road leading to an abandoned barn. Most people don't even see the road and those who do forget they've seen it five seconds after they passed it.

If you go down the road, you'll find it's guarded by--well, you'll probably be happier not knowing what's guarding it. But trust me, it's very well guarded.

Once inside, I made my way to my office and laboratory, nodding to my fellow federal mages along the way. Walking into my lab, I put the samples on a table and looked at the picture of our attractive abductee, one Ms. Amber Wades, provided by her roommates. It's an old picture, from her senior prom. By the surroundings I can tell she's petite, maybe five foot to five foot three, olive skinned, long dark hair and brown eyes. She's what would be called in polite circles as statuesque. Being an admirer of cleavages, I admired hers in the picture before I reluctantly put it away.

Running a few tests, I can tell a teleportation spell has been used, and one reaching over a fairly long distance. Which means the mage who cast it was capable of powerful and complex spell crafting. Not good news at all. The federal government is very good at ensuring that budding mages are either working for the forces of good or are working at pushing up daisies. And at this task the government is very, very good. Which means that someone got past the government's screening. Not good. Not good at all.

There was also another spell at play here, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. So I reached into the drawer of my file cabinet and pulled out a bag of charcoal briquettes. Then I summoned my "Tinkerbelle."

My advisor in college would be aghast that I didn't refer to my "tinkerbelle" by its Latin name or a derivate thereof, but all the investigators I knew called them "tinkerbelles". They're tiny fire elementals that look like a rough outline of Tinkerbelle, except composed entirely of flame. They possess the ability to shape time and fire (though on a very limited scale), making them very handy assistants in reconstructing crime scenes.

As soon as my "tinkerbelle" (though you can no more own a "tinkerbelle" than you can own a cat) appeared, I tossed her a charcoal briquette. She caught it, embraced it, and happily consumed it. For some reason, charcoal briquettes are to a "tinkerbelle" what catnip is to a cat. So it pays to keep plenty on hand. After she finished, she floated in front of my face and asked me what I wanted. A lot of times I summon her just to feed her treats. I have fellow investigators who tell me I'm too soft, that I should use the stick as well as the carrot. It is true you can compel assistance from "tinkerbelles", but I've known more than one colleague who suffered from having to use compelled assistance. Besides, I like my "tinkerbelle." In the end, I believe mutual respects pays off bigger.

I pointed to the samples and told her what I thought had happened and could she find out more, admonishing her to be sure she was careful. She sniffed disdainfully at this last warning, and then floated over the samples. She had actually saved me from a nasty magical trap one time on her own initiative. Compelled "helpers" will do exactly what you tell them to do, and not one iota more. Another argument for treating "tinkerbelles" and other magical beings as friends and not tools.

Once she was finished and told me what she had found, I whistled low and thoughtfully. Tossing her another charcoal briquettes with my gratitude, she disappeared contentedly.

This was a very powerful mage I was facing. One out of my league. I was going to have to call in help. Lots of help.

A quick discussion on the nature of magic would explain why.

The spell cast on our beautiful abductee had three parts.

The first part was a sleep spell. This is relatively easy magic. Putting someone to sleep or compelling them to tell the truth doesn't alter reality. It just channels reality in ways that already exist. Your just picking the way you want it to go.

The second part was a teleportation spell. This doesn't alter reality permanently, but bends it for a short period of time. Our abductee was transported somewhere between fifty and a hundred miles. I could probably pull that off with a booster potion and three days research. Maybe. But you're still not altering reality. Not permanently anyway. Just bending it a little, then letting it snap back into place.