Chapter 5: The Palmer House Trap
The Palmer House Hilton smelled of lemon-scented disinfectant and old money dying a slow death. Marble columns, veined with age, supported a ceiling where gilded cherubs flaked paint onto the checkerboard floor below. Holographic banners for Consortium-sponsored historical tours flickered weakly in the dim light, casting a sickly blue glow on the few people scattered in plush armchairs.
Mike adjusted the unfamiliar tie at his throat. His "best" suit was a decade old and pulled slightly at the shoulders. Casey, beside him, wore a simple black dress that did nothing to hide the practical, sturdy lines of her body. They looked like mid-level accountants attending a funeral. Mai, walking between them, was a splash of defiant color in a leather jacket and fitted jeans, her eyes scanning the room with hunter’s intensity.
“There,” she whispered.
At the far end of the cavernous lobby, in the dim recesses of the Empire Room bar, a man sat alone. Lord Freddie Highmore was a study in faded aristocracy. His tweed jacket was too warm for the climate-controlled room, his posture hunched over a glass of club soda as if it contained all the world’s sorrows. He looked up, caught Mai’s eye, and a tremor passed through his hands.
They’d taken three steps toward him when the service door to the left of the bar burst open.
Jan O’Connor filled the doorway, her medium-length red hair escaping its braid, her green eyes sparking with fury. She wasn’t dressed for stealth; she wore paint-splattered sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, as if she’d been pulled from a grade school art class. Godfrey III, the Maltese, quivered in a sling across her chest, his button eyes wide.
“Mai, don’t!” Jan’s voice cut through the muffled lobby air.
At the same instant, Kim’s calm, clipped tone sounded in the tiny comm piece nestled in Mai’s ear. “The Golden Wand agent at three o’clock is not a Golden Wand agent. Gait is wrong. Posture is wrong. It’s an impersonator.”
Simultaneously, from somewhere high in the rafters, Stacy’s voice, tight with urgency, crackled in Jan’s own ear. “Red, you’ve got a negative-energy signature converging on the bar. It’s a nullifier. Get down.”
The man at the bar—the one in the impeccable charcoal Gray Wand suit, with a mild-mannered face—stood up. His body seemed to ripple, the features dissolving like wet clay, rearranging into the sharper, colder visage of a man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-rim glasses. Senator James Murphy.
He didn’t speak to them. He spoke to the room, his voice amplified by a subtle tech-implant. “The corruption of magic ends here. With the collaborators and the abominations they shelter.”
In his hand was not a wand, but a pistol of brushed steel and glowing copper coils. An anti-magic nullifier, Consortium make.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mike muttered, his shoulders slumping. “Bait. Again.”
Casey sighed, a long-suffering sound. “Told you.”
Jan threw her hands out, a shimmering dome of green energy erupting around their group. The nullifier pistol whined, a high-pitched shriek that made the crystals on the chandeliers vibrate. It fired not a bullet, but a wave of silent, spreading grayness.
Where the wave met Jan’s shield, the green light didn’t shatter—it unraveled, dissolving into harmless motes that winked out. The nullification wave hit them physically, a pressure that shoved the air from Mike’s lungs and made his ears pop. A feeling of profound emptiness washed over him, a sudden, dull silence in his mind where he hadn’t realized there’d been a hum. All magic in the immediate area was severed, suppressed.
Senator Murphy smiled, a thin, cruel gash. “Take them. The girl is priority one.”
From behind pillars, from shadowed archways, four more men emerged. They wore tactical gear devoid of insignia, their movements synchronized, their eyes blank behind smoky visors. Consortium clean-up crew. They carried restraint coils and syringes.
Mai lunged for her father, but one of the tactical men was faster. A dart hissed, embedding itself in Freddie’s neck. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped forward onto the bar.
“Dad!” Mai’s scream was raw, tearing through the stagnant air, but it was swallowed by the sudden explosion of movement from both flanks of the lobby.
From the shadowed archway near the bar, Jan’s group surged forward. Hank, a bull in a Hawaiian shirt, roared and charged, his meaty fists already clenched. Beside him, Fatima moved with lethal grace, her eyes calculating trajectories even without her magic. Vivian, a flash of red hair and pale skin, darted low, her timidity burned away by the immediate threat to her friends. Bethany, in a vintage tweed skirt suit, produced a gleaming, brass-knuckled device from her purse. Dale, his scarred head gleaming under the chandeliers, moved with the calm precision of a former security officer, and from the mezzanine above, Stacy swung down on a curtain cord, a 9mm already in her hand.
Simultaneously, from the main hotel entrance, Mai’s backup team spilled into the chaos. Kim led, her curved sword singing from its sheath. Maryam was a step behind, baseball cap still firmly backwards, snatching a heavy ice bucket from a service cart. Jenny and Amanda, a whirlwind of red and blonde, pushed forward together, Jenny’s hands already weaving confusing glimmers in the air. Bruce MacDougal hefted his steampunk wrench with a fierce grin, Ben Bryant looked startled but determined beside him, and Calista’s silver hair streamed behind her, fingertips already glowing with ember-hot light.
“No, wait, hold on!” Katie “Boom Boom” Manelli yelled, stumbling out from behind the bar itself where she’d been nursing a gin and tonic. She waved her arms, a human intersection point for the two converging groups. “You’re gonna—!”
She was too late.
Kim lunged at the nearest Consortium tactical agent, her sword a silver arc aimed for his weapon arm. From the other side, Hank saw the same agent turning toward his wife and launched himself in a perfect, blitzing tackle. They collided not with the agent, but with each other.
The impact was a sickening thud of muscle and bone. Hank’s shoulder drove into Kim’s ribs. Her sword clattered across the marble as the air exploded from her lungs. They hit the ground in a tangled heap of familial confusion. “The hell, kid?” Hank grunted, struggling to untangle himself. “I had him!”
“You… crushed… me,” Kim wheezed, her philosophical composure shattered.
The failure in coordination rippled outwards like a crack in a dam. Maryam, hurling the ice bucket, saw Stacy lining up a shot and jerked her throw, sending it spinning into a potted palm instead. Bruce, swinging his wrench at a visored head, had to abort as Jenny’s illusion of a second Bruce momentarily overlapped with the real him. A Consortium agent stumbled over the fallen sword, crashing into Dale, who was trying to subdue another. Vivian, leaping to help, was clipped by Ben, who was himself shoved by a fleeing civilian in a feathered hat.
It was a symphony of pure, unadulterated clusterfuck.
Glass shattered. A chandelier swung wildly, raining crystal dust. Civilians shrieked, diving behind furniture or sprinting for the exits. Consortium agents, trained for orderly suppression, were just as confounded by the unpredictable, friendly-fire-ridden melee. One agent fired a restraint coil that wrapped around his own partner’s legs. Another, trying to aim at Jan, backed directly into Bethany, who promptly zapped him with her brass-knuckled device, making his teeth chatter audibly.
Senator Murphy, his nullifier pistol momentarily useless in the close-quarters scrap, bellowed with incoherent rage. “You idiots! Secure the primary target! The girl!”
In the relative eye of this storm, Mike and Casey stood near a toppled velvet settee. Mike brushed a shard of champagne flute from his sleeve. He caught the eye of a terrified bartender cowering behind the solid oak counter. “Two whiskeys.Neat. Please.”
The bartender, moving on pure instinct, slid two glasses across the polished wood. Mike caught them, handed one to Casey. They clinked glasses.
“To being the bait,” Mike said, his voice flat.
“Best job we’ve ever had,” Casey replied, and knocked the liquor back in one searing gulp.
A Consortium agent, seeing them apparently unguarded, broke from the scrum and charged them, restraint coils humming in his grip. Before he took three steps, a furious, screaming red-haired comet dropped onto his back from the swaying remains of the chandelier. Jan wrapped her legs around his torso and began pulling at his visor with berserk fingers. “Give me that! You stupid science fuck!”
“Now,” Mike said.
They moved. It was a simple, practiced drift. While Jan distracted the agent, they slid past the struggle, two ordinary people weaving through a supernatural and tactical disaster. Mike’s hand shot out, clamping on the collar of Mai’s leather jacket. She was still staring, paralyzed, at her father’s unconscious form over the bar.
“We’re leaving. Now,” Mike said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He yanked her back just as a stun baton crackled through the space where her head had been.
Casey spun, looking for cover. Her eyes found Calista, who was breathing hard, her hands wreathed in flickering orange flame. “Calista! Give us a screen and follow!”
Calista didn’t hesitate. She thrust her palms forward. A roaring wave of elf-fire, hotter than reality but consuming nothing, erupted across the lobby floor between the main fight and the bar. It wasn’t an attack; it was a blinding, heat-shimmering wall of sheer visual noise. Consortium agents flinched back. Even Jan’s group paused.
Through the chaotic light and heat, Mike, Casey, and Mai ran for a service exit behind the bar. Calista dashed after them, the fire dying in her wake. They burst out into a dank loading alley littered with dumpsters. And there, idling with palpable anxiety, was a boxy white delivery truck.
The side was cheerfully painted with loaves of bread, cupcakes, and the words “PROOF & PROVISION” in elegant cursive. Rick Williamson white-knuckled the steering wheel, his face pale. The back doors swung open.
They piled in, the truck reeking of warm sugar, yeast, and cinnamon. Calista pulled the doors shut, plunging them into dim, bread-scented semi-darkness. The truck lurched forward, tires squealing.
“Not exactly inconspicous, Dad,” Calista cracked, her voice shaky from adrenaline as she found a grip among sacks of flour.
“No,” Mike grunted, settling onto a stacked palette of sourdough boules. “But it smells good in here.”
Rick floored it, the delivery truck careening out of the alley and merging into Chicago’s evening traffic. In the bouncing gloom, lit only by passing streetlights bleeding through the rear door vents, Mai finally moved. She crawled to a small vent window, staring back at the receding, grand hulk of the Palmer House.
Her father was in there. Gone. First her mother, now him. The reality of it, cold and final, pressed down on her. She didn’t cry. She just stared, her knuckles white where they gripped the cold metal of the truck, the city lights blurring into meaningless streaks against the dark.
Back in the lobby’s wreckage, the ringing in Jan’s ears subsided to a tinny whine. Shards of crystal crunched under her boots as she strode toward Senator Murphy, who was straightening his tie with furious, precise tugs. Stacy had him in her sights from behind an overturned table, her 9mm unwavering.
“Stacy, don’t!” Jan barked, her voice hoarse. “He’s still a sitting United States Senator, you can’t just fucking drill him in front of CPD.”
Stacy’s finger stayed on the trigger guard, her jaw clenched. “He just attacked civilians, Red. He drugged a man.”
“I want to know what you’re after,” Jan demanded, stopping a few feet from Murphy. She ignored the groans of the downed Consortium agents, the way Freddie’s stool was now empty, a smear on the polished bar rail the only sign he’d been dragged away during the brawl. Her focus was a laser. “What does the Consortium want with Mai Harata? She’s a kid.”
Murphy smoothed his jacket, his sneer a masterpiece of contempt. “This is too public a place for this discussion.” Sirens wailed, closing in. Red and blue lights strobed through the grand entrance. “And now, you are under arrest for magical disturbance, assault, and conspiracy. All of you.”
Chicago Police officers in tactical gear flooded the lobby, their weapons sweeping the scene. Murphy pointed a rigid finger at Jan, then at Hank, Fatima, Vivian, Dale, Bethany, Katie, and the rest. “These are the perpetrators, officers. They attacked my security detail during a lawful meeting. I will be pressing every charge.”
Jan laughed, a sharp, wild sound. “You’ll be wasting your time. Call Mara Henderson. Tell her Jan O’Connor and friends are taking a ride.” She met Murphy’s gaze, her green eyes blazing. “I’ll be out before your paperwork is dry.”
Fatima, rubbing a bruise on her temple, muttered in Arabic. “Jan, you are not helping our case by taunting the man with the police force.”
“He started it,” Jan snapped, holding her hands out for the cuffs an advancing officer produced. The metal clicked cold and tight around her wrists. As she was led away, she called over her shoulder, “Tell Mara we’ll need the big legal guns! And someone find out who the hell took Freddie!”
In the shuddering bread truck, Casey peered out the grimy rear vent window. “Rick, is that my car?”
A familiar, boxy blue sedan was weaving through traffic two cars back. Rick’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, then away, his guilty flush visible even in the dashboard glow.
“Mandy borrowed it, didn’t she?” Casey asked, her tone flat. “Without asking.”
“She said it was for a… school thing,” Rick offered weakly, gripping the wheel as he took a sharp turn into their neighborhood.
“She’s not in school. She’s planning black ops in my living room.” Casey sighed, slumping back against a sack of flour. “Just take us home, Rick.”
“Is that a good idea?” Rick’s voice was tense. “If they were after Mai at the hotel…”
“The way old Mrs. Anderson across the street watches our house and calls the HOA if a gnome is crooked, there is no way anyone is sneaking up on that place.” Casey’s logic was bulletproof. “It’s the most surveilled property on the block. We’ll see them coming. Go home.”
The Williamson house was a cave of warm, safe-smelling gloom after the truck’s tense darkness. They piled into the cluttered kitchen. Mai stood shaking, not from cold, but from a delayed seismic shock, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“Calista, Mandy,” Casey said, her voice shifting into a gentle command. “Get Mai upstairs. Run her a hot bath. Use the good sandalwood incense from the cabinet, not the cheap stuff. Stay with her.”
Mandy, who had just come in the back door looking sheepish, nodded. She approached Mai carefully, as one would a spooked animal. “Come on. We’ve got epic bath bombs. The kind that fizz for ten minutes.”
Calista put an arm around Mai’s shoulders, guiding her toward the stairs. “We’ll find you something soft to wear. It’s okay.”
The three girls disappeared upstairs. The sound of water rushing into the old tub began to rumble through the ceiling pipes.
Mike sank into a kitchen chair, the adrenaline draining away to leave a profound weariness. “Okay.So. The kids ran one op. Jan ran a completely different op. Neither told us. And both went spectacularly to shit, resulting in probable arrests and an aborted conversation with a minor English lord.”
Casey put the kettle on. “And our friends’ daughters fucked us stupid to hide their planning. Which, while creatively distracting, is not a sustainable operational model.”
“We need to tell everyone,” Mike said, rubbing his face. “The next time they decide to use our house or our lives as a staging ground, they have to involve us in the planning.” He looked at Casey. “Right?”
“Right after we find out what the hell they were actually planning,” Casey said, pulling mugs from the cupboard. The domestic ritual was a anchor. “And after we deal with… that.”
She nodded toward the hallway. From behind the closed door of Mandy’s room, adjacent to the bathroom, came the distinct, rhythmic sound of a headboard knocking softly against the wall. A muffled, masculine groan filtered through.
“Ben’s here,” Mike stated. "He must have escaped arrest."
“Sounds like he’s helping with the morale situation,” Casey said, a smirk pulling at her lips. The kettle whistled. She poured water over tea bags, the steam rising in a fragrant cloud.
In Mandy’s room, lit only by the eerie glow of multiple computer monitors displaying scrolling code, Ben Bryant was flat on his back on the disheveled bed. Mandy straddled him, her long shaggy hair falling around her face as she rode his cock with a relentless, focused intensity.
“Fuck, Mandy, oh god,” Ben choked out, his hands scrambling at her hips. His jeans were around his ankles, his shirt rucked up under his armpits.
“Shut up,” she breathed, not unkindly, her own shirt gone, her small breasts bouncing with each downward plunge. She was soaked, the slick sounds of their coupling loud in the tech-filled room. “Just feel it. I need to not think for a minute.”
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, changing the angle. He gasped as she took him deeper, the head of his cock grinding against a spot inside her that made her eyes roll back. “There. Right there, you bastard.”
She began to fuck him in earnest, slamming her hips down, taking every inch of him in hard, wet strokes. The headboard tapped a frantic, persistent rhythm against the wall. Ben’s back arched, his heels digging into the mattress.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice tight. “Mandy, I can’t—”
“Do it,” she growled, reaching between them to rub her clit in rough, circular motions. “Fill me up. I want to feel it.”
With a strangled cry, Ben slammed upward, his hips bucking off the bed as he emptied himself inside her in hot, pulsing jets. The feeling of him convulsing beneath her, the warm flood, tipped Mandy over the edge. Her cunt clamped down on him in vicious, rhythmic spasms, milking his cock dry as she bit down on her own wrist to silence her scream.
She collapsed forward onto his sweaty chest, both of them panting. The headboard fell still. From the bathroom next door, the scent of sandalwood incense and the soft murmur of Calista’s voice drifted through the wall.
Ben’s hand rose, stroking her hair clumsily. “Was that… was that about the mission going bad?”
“It was about everything,” Mandy mumbled into his skin. “My parents are pissed. You almost got arrested by a psycho senator. Mai’s family is gone. The whole world is cracked.” She lifted her head, her smirk returning, fragile but present. “This was the only thing that made sense.”
He kissed her, softly. “It makes sense to me.”
Downstairs, Mike and Casey sipped their tea at the kitchen table, listening to the house settle. The plumbing groaned as the bath water drained upstairs. The headboard had gone quiet. VanGogh the cat jumped onto the table, demanding tribute.
“We’ll talk to them in the morning,” Casey said, scratching the cat’s ears. “All of them. Lay down the new law.”
Mike nodded, staring into his mug. The weariness was still there, but underneath it was a familiar, stubborn resolve. They were the bait, the center, the stable ground. And they were done being left in the dark. The next move would be theirs.