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my
     mother, what is
your
problem?”
    Gage ached for her. Hell for everyone he knew.
    “Yeah. I hear you. I hope this PR lady works out because it’d make me a hell of lot
     more comfortable if you weren’t the one out there all the time.”
    Meriel’s smile was slightly sad. “I’d be lying if I denied the appeal of being out
     of the spotlight on this. Right now with all this stuff going on, our legal stuff
     is overwhelming. We’re working with the ACLU and some other human rights groups to
     deal with all the employment and housing discrimination stuff. But I’d prefer to be
     out there fighting that fight too instead of dealing with asshat news reporters.”
    “We don’t have to talk to them, you know. Fuck what they want.”
    Meriel shrugged. “We don’t have to, no. But this issue isn’t going away. In fact it’s
     getting worse. We need to control the message or we’re screwed.”
    He sighed. “All right. I’m going to get on this. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
    Background checks were pretty rote by that point. He knew back doors into the nationwide
     system and into several major city and state databases. It didn’t take him long to
     begin to build a folder on Ms. Ryan.
    Molly Ryan was an interesting woman. If she was what she claimed to be, she’d be a
     boon to Owen. Graduated top of her class in every class he could find. Intelligent,
     clearly. Raised by a single mother who happened to be an economics professor at the
     University of Chicago. No arrest records. No record of who her father was either.
    That part burned in his gut. What kind of man just walked away? Did he know, Gage
     wondered? Maybe the mother never told him.
    He paged through the links she’d sent and those he’d dug up on his own. Awards. He
     was able to get her financials. She made a lot of money. Saved it. Donated regularly
     to several charities. Mentored college students. Maybe she hated kittens or something.
    It appeared that she’d lost several people she was close to in the aftermath of the
     Magister.
    Hadn’t they all?
    She’d also been outed in a spectacular fashion by the PURITY people just several days
     before. That filled him with rage. These PURITY people were garbage. They didn’t care
     who they hurt.
    By the time he left many hours later, his respect of Molly Ryan had grown immensely.
     If everything else panned out overnight and she came out and Meriel and Dominic liked
     her, she’d be a great asset.

Chapter 4
    MOLLY had gotten off the plane, headed to the hotel and channel surfed for three hours before
     finally getting herself relaxed enough to get to sleep. Things were so . . . she didn’t
     know how to describe it. Anxious maybe. She wanted to get started on something. Hated
     not doing anything.
    Still, when she woke up and her breakfast showed up, she began to focus and get ready.
     Having a purpose was something she found soothing. Doing her hair and makeup, getting
     dressed—it had felt as if she was putting on armor.
    The walk from the hotel was as quick as the instructions she’d looked up online had
     said. Seattle’s downtown core made sense. Molly liked it. Loved all the little coffee
     shops and bakeries. Loved the hustle and bustle of commuters as they landed and began
     to stream toward office buildings.
    There was a protest and a counter-protest outside the Federal Building. But plenty
     of police presence kept it out of riot territory. At least during the time she’d walked
     past. A lot of angry faces and hateful signs, as she’d seen elsewhere. That part made
     her sad. But it hadn’t made her fearful. And the counter-protest had been sizable.
     Larger than the anti-Other protest. That had cheered her.
    The air was clean and her magick lay in her belly, so easily called. Not something
     she’d experienced in the middle of a city before. Maybe it was about the ground here
     being held by a clan so long. She didn’t know. Didn’t know a lot of things