Spellbound Security Book 1: Codename Rockstar
This side gig was supposed to be easy money. With some extra magic in the air, this job is about to go wrong
Codename: Rockstar –
Danica Grey stood with her back against the wall at one end of a large, rectangular room. The white-painted walls all around featured enormous oil canvases featuring images of places where land met ocean. A lectern stood on a raised stage to her right, waiting for whatever notable would proclaim from it. A veritable sea of round tables filled the rest of the room, appropriate to the imagery of the paintings.
What was probably the hotel’s biggest room was full of men in tuxedos and bow ties accompanied by women in beautiful gowns with elaborate hairdos. She didn’t fit in among this gaggle of well-to-do quad- and penta-generians.
Someone who took note of her would first see the off-white suit and matching pumps, offset by a soft gray blouse. Next, they’d take in her long blonde hair and the perfectly smooth skin that her practiced and adept use of makeup provided. Her nails were shaped and polished in a deep red that matched her lipstick and stood out against the rest of the outfit. The darker color was her little piece of originality. She laughed inwardly. Yeah, I’m a total rebel.
If someone were to stand beside her, they might notice the small object nestled in her slightly pointed left ear. Its body was clear, but the electronics inside were silver, black, and odd-looking in that spot. No one was likely to get that close tonight since she was part of the surroundings, not a participant in the main event.
Perfectly clear speech came through the earpiece, easily overcoming the chatter and conversations of the guests as Arthur Blackwood’s cultured British voice ordered, “Report.”
Danica’s gaze tracked around the room and briefly settled on each of Spellbound Security’s guards as they reported. Her role was to be strictly an observer after accepting Arthur’s request to observe his team in action and provide feedback on their performance.
Six guards were along the walls, two at the back, two on the far side, and two holding position on her wall. She couldn’t see those responsible for the next round of responses, which came from personnel in the corridors surrounding the big room. The last two guards, a tuxedoed man and a gowned woman sitting at a table with their protectees, gave natural-seeming nods instead of verbal responses to indicate their awareness.
Arthur said, “Good. The event kicks off in ten minutes, they tell me. Keep your eyes and ears open, people.”
Danica swept her gaze across the room methodically, left to right in the near section, the opposite in the middle, and the same in the far section, before repeating it in reverse. The Spellbound Security personnel wore dark glasses that would have information projected on them from the team’s technical support. She hadn’t received a pair since her role was to watch the guards, not the data, although she wondered how Arthur had explained her status to the others.
The members of Spellbound Security Miami didn’t know she was there to evaluate them. Arthur had introduced her as a consultant for the hotel, which was considering giving them a long-term contract. Spellbound was already well respected, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, although their work took them far beyond those three cities. This event was at a beachside resort in Tampa, Florida.
Danica laughed inwardly. It had been very easy to accept the offer of a free trip to Tampa for the weekend in return for providing one night’s observation and a formal report with recommendations. The company she worked for, Castle Investigations, was unaware of her moonlighting, but nothing in her contract prohibited it.
She had put in her required hours at work for the week before coming to Tampa and would be back in plenty of time to get in on Monday, although whether she managed to sleep beforehand was another question entirely. The nightlife in Tampa was supposed to be something special, and the resort hotel had a beach party every night that she’d heard was wild, crazy, and fun. Danica wasn’t one to turn down any of those things.
Arthur warned, “Five minutes.”
His accent always made her smile. Her family had met him in Europe during the time they’d moved from one military base to the next to the next to support her father’s career. Their connection had continued in the decades since, and he’d put in a good word for her with her current employers.
She would have done this gig for nothing if he’d asked because he was essentially family. She wasn’t about to turn down a paycheck, either. She was loyal, not stupid.
Her routine scanning of the room stopped as the entrance doors were closed and black-uniformed servers moved through the crowd to deliver appetizers. A speaker stepped up onto the stage and began to talk. Danica processed the sight in an instant, noting that it was a woman dressed in a sharp business suit with an American flag pin on her lapel.
Her mind categorized the woman as a politician and immediately put thoughts of her aside. It was unlikely that the governor, senator, representative, or whatever the woman was would be a threat to the board of trustees of Coralsyne Corporation, which had hired Spellbound Security for protection.
Arthur had explained that an infomancer broke into the company’s servers and accessed the calendars of its executives and trustees before the company’s countermeasures could eject the intruder. The breach had alarmed Coralsyne enough to hire extra protection for this event. Their security personnel were also onsite but not operating in conjunction with Spellbound beyond a shared radio channel.
A bored male voice reported in her earpiece, “Nothing on the cameras. This place is pretty buttoned up.”
One of the guards on her side of the room muttered, “Must be tough, sitting up there in a plush hotel room watching television. I bet you’re wearing the free robe, too.”
The technician laughed. “Someone’s got to do the dirty work, right? We can’t all have the glory positions. I noticed a lot of pretty women’s eyes turning your way, though.”
Danica suppressed a smile at the banter and resumed sweeping the room with her gaze.
Some operations she’d been part of would have slammed down such small talk, but Arthur’s philosophy was to hire the best people he could and let them do their jobs without harassment. If that meant a little levity while everyone was doing their jobs, he didn’t see it as a problem. She didn’t either, although she had the benefit of not being responsible for the evening’s outcome. If she was, she supposed she might feel differently.
She began a slow circuit of the room to evaluate the positioning and attentiveness of the other guards. Her gaze continued to rove in search of threats, although she doubted any would materialize.
Danica wasn’t sure who would want to take out a board of trustees unless it was a corporate competitor. Kidnapping or whatever seemed a bit much for business types. Still, people did things for reasons she couldn’t comprehend all the time, so she wasn’t about to eliminate it as a possibility.
She had made it halfway around the room when she got a familiar itch where her spine met her skull. Danica had elven blood deep in her family tree. The magical abilities that came with the bloodline were weak in some generations and strong in others. She was one of the strongest magicals in her family’s recent memory, and one of her naturally active abilities was an enhanced sense of the presence of magic.
The realization that magic was nearby manifested in different ways, sometimes as a taste, sometimes a smell, and sometimes the creepy crawlies she got on the back of her neck. She warned, “Eyes up. Active magic in the room.” It was a bit of an overstatement. She wasn’t positive it was in the room, only that it was nearby.
Arthur replied, “Could you be detecting cosmetic illusions or things like that? This is a crowd that would use them.”
Danica’s lips twitched in annoyance because she couldn’t rule it out. “It’s possible, but this feels stronger than those usually do.”
Many people in the modern era used magic, whether theirs or purchased from others, for simple cosmetic changes. Changing one’s hair color for a night was a popular one. Everyone who had entered had walked through a hidden scanner, which meant no strong magic was present. None of that explained the increasing feeling of magic use.
As Danica resumed her slow patrol around the room, her gaze drifted to the pair of Spellbound Security employees seated at the table with the board members. They were older than the rest of the Spellbound Security personnel, in their late forties, and thus fit in better with the assembled group than the others could. Danica was closer to the average Spellbound age at twenty-eight, although she was still older than several guards watching the corridors.
She stopped moving and squinted. Right there, beyond the table with the trustees and the guards. Something was wrong. It was like wearing glasses with a tiny bit of grease on them, which distorted the vision barely a touch at the edge of notice. She snapped, “At least one veil in the room, near our table.”
Arthur snapped, “Get them out.”
No sooner had the guards along the walls begun to move toward the table than six enemies appeared around it, each wearing tuxedos and masks and holding pistols pointed at the ceiling.
She’d been wrong. Big businesses played rougher than she thought. Danica growled a curse as instinct propelled her to dash toward the table.
Hopefully, Danica’s power is stronger than this mystery force. Find out on November 11th when Codenam Rockstar: Spellbound Security Book 1 is released. Until then head over to Amazon and download it today.
