Mind Games

1 Jeremy Wilcox shot an annoyed glance at his phone, which sat on the table next to the computer where he was working and had just started to buzz. His first instinct was to ignore the call. After all, everything in the witch world had been basically quiet as a tomb for the past couple of months, ever since his brother Jake had settled in with his girlfriend Addie, and all of the “orphan” witches they’d liberated from a government facility in Virginia had either been united with the clans they belonged to or had been given a place to live in Flagstaff. There hadn’t been a single ping in the system Jeremy had set up at Trident Enterprises to locate clan-less witches and warlocks, not even the slightest blip on the radar to indicate there might be more of them out there somewhere in the world. No, the call was probably from Jake, who’d taken advantage of the gorgeous September weather to take the afternoon off and hike around Aspen Corner with Addie, and who had probably just gotten back into cell phone range and wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important. Right. Like there was anything to miss, important or not. Their cousin Laurel, who made up the remainder of the Trident team, was also playing hooky. She hadn’t provided any real excuse for skipping out on work, except to say she was tired of sitting around and doing nothing, and so she’d gotten together with a couple of other Wilcox cousins to go down to Jerome for the day and hang out. In other words, shop and eat and probably hit all the wine-tasting rooms. Jeremy hoped they’d at least picked a designated driver. Most people probably would have understood their restlessness. Flagstaff in September tended to be near perfection — mild temperatures, fresh air, skies so serenely blue, they could have been carved from a vast block of lapis. Jeremy, on the other hand, couldn’t help being a bit irritated with his brother and his cousin. They needed to treat Trident Enterprises like the serious business it was. Hadn’t they already located fourteen “orphans” in pretty much one fell swoop? So, they were currently going through a bit of a dry spell. That didn’t mean everyone had license to go off and do whatever the hell they wanted. Scowling, he picked up the phone. His irritation lessened slightly as he read the number on the screen. It wasn’t Jake’s. No, it was Dan Begay calling. Dan wasn’t a member of the Wilcox clan — he was Navajo — but the local branch of the tribe knew all about the Wilcoxes, knew there was a lot more to them than appeared at first glance. While the witch clans in general did whatever was necessary to conceal their natures from the rest of the world, the Wilcox family had had dealings with the Navajo from pretty much the very moment they’d settled in Flagstaff in the 1870s, and so there weren’t many secrets between them, not after spending almost a hundred and fifty years around one another. Although Dan’s family lived out near Cameron on the Navajo reservation, he’d gone to high school in Flagstaff, which was how he and Jeremy had become friends. And while they didn’t see each other much anymore — Dan had been working at the Twin Arrows casino about twenty miles east of town for the past few years — Jeremy knew his friend wouldn’t be calling unless he had a damn good reason. One more ring, and it would roll over to voicemail. That seemed to decide things. He picked up the phone and swiped the screen. “Jeremy here.” “Hey.” As usual, Dan sounded calm and easygoing, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. However, Jeremy doubted he would be calling unless something was up. Which turned out to be exactly the case. “We’ve got a situation here,” Dan went on. “At least, we think it’s a situation. Maybe it’s nothing.” “At the casino?” Jeremy asked. “Yeah. A weird pattern of wins.” Jeremy’s mind immediately went to the most plausible explanation. “Someone counting cards?” “We’re not sure.” That reply didn’t make much sense. After all, casinos trained their dealers to look for signs of card counting, and Jeremy doubted the management at Twin Arrows would have overlooked something so fundamental when it came to making sure their staff members were on top of any situation that might arise at their gaming tables. “You have someone in particular you’re watching?” he asked. “No.” A pause, and Dan added, “I know I’m not giving you much to go on. This is probably more a hunch than anything else. But you told me to keep an eye out for anything that seemed out of the ordinary.” True enough. As they were ramping up Trident Enterprises back in the spring, Jeremy had suggested to Jake that they might have a few select people in the Navajo nation lend their own assistance when it came to finding any orphaned witches or warlocks. No, they couldn’t tell someone was a witch just by looking at her, of course, and neither would they experience the subtle tingle or twitch or ringing in their ears that happened whenever a witch or warlock met one of their kind for the first time, but at the very least, they could provide more sets of eyes and ears in locations where traffic cameras and other official means of surveillance were in short supply. Jake had gone along with the plan, mostly because he knew as well as anyone else that the Wilcoxes didn’t have many secrets among the Navajo, and he figured having some extra help couldn’t hurt. “Well, I can take a look,” Jeremy said, even though he had a feeling this was all probably a wild goose chase. “But you’ll have to give me access to your security system.” A brief pause, and then Dan said, sounding diffident, “I thought you could get in without anyone’s help.” His friend had him there. In school, Jeremy had tried to keep his talent with computers somewhat in check, mostly because he hadn’t wanted to freak out his teachers with the true extent of his abilities, but Dan knew his friend’s magic allowed him to hack just about any computer system in the world. “True,” Jeremy said. “But it’ll take me some time.” He paused as another thought occurred to him. “Or is it that you don’t want anyone to know you’ve reached out for help?” “Something like that. Let’s just say this isn’t an official request.” Fair enough. Dan had been working security at the casino for a couple of years, but it wasn’t as though he was head of operations or anything. He’d been recently promoted to a position of more responsibility — at least, Jeremy had a vague recollection of getting a text invite to a party to celebrate the promotion. Not that he’d gone; he didn’t see the point in hanging out with a bunch of people he didn’t know, fending off questions as to why he wasn’t getting wasted with everyone else. Sure, he liked to crack open a beer every once in a while, and he drank wine at the Wilcox Christmas potluck, that sort of thing, but he’d never been a fan of killing off brain cells in mindless pursuit of supposed “fun.” Anyway, he could see why Dan wouldn’t want anyone at the casino to know that an outsider was inside their security system and taking a look around. This might be nothing…or it might not. If someone really was taking advantage of the casino by counting cards — it technically wasn’t illegal, but it could still get you booted if you were found out — then Jeremy figured he’d be doing them all a favor by locating the culprit. “No problem,” he said. “It shouldn’t take me long to get in, and then I’ll poke around and download the footage so my algorithms can take a hack at it.” Dan made a noise that might have been a sigh. “Hey, man, I know you have this crazy talent for computers, but do you have to make it sound like you’re cracking someone’s locker combination?” “I could lie, but what would be the point?” Jeremy paused for a second, then added, “But don’t worry — I’m sure your security is perfectly adequate to most situations. It’s just that I’m not ‘most situations.’” “No, I guess not.” Another thought occurred to him. “Hey, if I see some obvious holes in your security, I’ll write up some notes, show you guys how to take care of any issues I find.” Apparently, Dan wasn’t as enthralled by that offer as Jeremy thought he would be, since he said, reluctance clear in his tone, “Uh…sure. I could take a look and pass on any recommendations.” Meaning that his friend would probably take the credit for those insights and carefully avoid mentioning that it was someone else who’d formulated the analysis. Which was fine. Jeremy honestly didn’t care one way or another if anyone at Twin Arrows knew it was his work and not Dan’s; it wasn’t as if he planned to become the casino’s cyber-security boss or something like that. Anything he offered would be as a favor and nothing more. “Whatever works,” he said. “Anyway, let me get into it, and I’ll text you if I find something.” “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Jeremy made a noncommittal noise and ended the call, then absently set the phone down on the table so he could return his attention to the computer in front of him. When Dan called, he’d been debugging the latest tweaks to what Jeremy referred to as his “search and destroy” algorithm, although of course, it didn’t actually destroy anything. No, it just went about the business of slicing through untold gigabytes of data from servers the world over, looking for any anomalies that might indicate the presence of an individual with supernatural powers. At any rate, the debugging routine could wait. He had something far more interesting to work on now. A crack of his knuckles, and he got to work.