Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [111]
The drive was pretty quick by Chicago standards—a surprisingly speedy jaunt along Lake Shore Drive—but it did give me a few minutes to reflect and gain a little perspective. Not that I was going to find a lot of resolution in a fifteen-minute drive or even a few hours away from the House, but the space was necessary. I needed to recharge around people who knew me only as Merit . . . not as Sentinel.
I’d apparently burned through my parking luck; a new bar had opened across the street from Catcher’s gym, so the neighborhood was full of long-legged girls and overcologned boys ready to head into the bar for flirtations and overpriced appletinis. I found a space three blocks away and walked back to the gym, then headed inside.
The interior of the building was shaped like a giant T, and the gym—the place where Catcher had taught me to use a sword—was down the central hallway. I felt the electric sizzle in the air as soon as I reached the doorway. Rubbing the uncomfortable prickle along my arms, I peeked inside.
Catcher wore his fancy new glasses, track pants, and a T-shirt; Mallory wore yoga pants and a sports bra, which was actually more clothing than he’d let me train in. The lucky duck.
That said, her training was a different duck altogether. I’d known Catcher was amazing with a sword, and I’d known sorcerers—in addition to bending the universe to their wills—could throw balls of what looked like magical fire. But I’d never seen anything like this.
It was a like a game of magical handball. The two of them stood at opposite ends of the room, throwing and dodging brilliantly colored orbs at each other. Catcher would heft a ball of magic toward Mallory, and Mallory would avoid it or toss out her own shot. Sometimes the shots would hit each other and burst into a fall of sparks; sometimes they’d miss and explode against the walls with a crackle of sound.
That explained the tingle in the air—each time a ball exploded, it sent a cloud of magic pulsing through the room. I guess that was the risk of watching sorcerers practice.
Mallory looked over and offered a quick wave before lobbing a ball of blue fire back at Catcher.
“Hey, you!”
I glanced over. Jeff sat in a plastic chair on the other side of the door, a bowl of popcorn in his lap.
“Cop a squat,” he said, patting the seat behind him. “I was actually going to call you.”
“No need to call now,” I said, taking a seat and grabbing some kernels of corn. It was kettle corn, which I adored. A little bit salty, a little bit sweet, and probably plenty better for me than a box of Mallocakes.
“So, I did a little more digging into the criminal record of our friend Paulie Cermak.”
“I thought you said his file was sealed.”
Jeff threw up a piece of popcorn, then caught it in his teeth. “Oh, I did. But ‘sealed’ and ‘no longer in the system’ are two different things.”
“Is this the appropriate time for a lecture on computer hacking?”
“Not if you want me to give you the information I found.”
I was becoming less of a stickler for the rules. “Lay it on me.”
“So, to put it in layman’s terms, while the file has officially been sealed for court purposes, an image of the file’s contents was cached before it was sealed, so all the data’s still out there. Now, as it turns out, there was only one item on the guy’s record—he got a citation for punching someone in the face. A simple assault kind of deal.”
I tried to play back my memory. I thought I’d seen Paulie Cermak before. Had it been on television? A report of the assault on the evening news? But I couldn’t remember anything specific. “Who was the victim?”
“No clue. The guy never pressed charges, and his name was redacted from the file before it was scanned.”
I sighed. “So Paulie Cermak punches a guy. The cops get called, but the vic doesn’t press charges,