"the tracking system is basically a network of sentry ases," elyssa explained. "after several close calls with idiots on flying brooms or carpets nearly hitting nom aircraft, the templar custodians asked the overworld conclave for a system to find out who the lawbreakers were."

i remembered the custodians from my conflict with maximus in bogota, colombia. they cleaned up supernatural messes to keep the noms from finding out about the overworld. i wouldn't want their job for all the peanuts in china.

shelton clapped his hands together. "let's get to work, then."

we assigned numbers to each of the limos and watched the first group leave the grotto. the illusionary vehicles only lasted ten minutes, and we figured out the real one by a process of elimination, following it to an affluent dunwoody neighborhood. unfortunately, the trackers wouldn't identify the people in the video unless they'd violated the law, so we marked down the address to look up later.

it took us nearly three hours to track the next two limos and mark down their destinations. despite our fears that we wouldn't know which cars were illusions if they went inside a parking garage or other covered structure, the ase trackers swooped inside the decks to maintain a line of sight. i wondered if the tiny marble-like devices interfered with aircraft, or if noms ever saw the little things flitting around. they were probably charmed with diversion spells to make noms and supers alike ignore them without even knowing about it.

i wondered what prevented someone from hijacking such an extensive system and spying on anyone they wished but didn't voice the concern for fear it would derail our mission. the ota's network of little spy bots made the nsa look like small fries.

"we've got a problem," elyssa said about forty minutes into tracking the fourth limo.

shelton looked at the three-dimensional holograph hovering above her part of the table. "what's the issue?"

"who has a limo that didn't vanish?" she asked.

nobody raised their hands.

"i counted ten illusions," shelton said. "there are five of us, which means we each tracked two."

"one of my cars was not tracked," stacey said, rewinding the footage, and pointing to car number seven. as the image played forward, the limo simply drove off, vanishing down the road without a tracker following it.

"that's the original," shelton said. "and it has an anti-tracking spell on it."

"one of the illusions is following it," elyssa said, pointing to car number four, one that i'd tracked.

we watched it for a few minutes, until the original limo turned left at an intersection while the illusion continued on straight.

"any idea if it's the conroys?" i asked.

"dollars to donuts it is," shelton said, pulling up a map on his arcphone and looking at the intersection. "that's a wealthy part of town. i'd bet they're going somewhere within a few miles' radius of there."

"too wide a net to cast," elyssa said, shaking her head. "let's move on to the next limo for now."

shelton stared at the map for a long moment before nodding. "yeah. maybe it wasn't the conroys." he didn't sound convinced.

the next limo used five illusions, each of which vanished after ten minutes, though the original limo went to a high rise building just down the street from the grotto. we felt pretty certain the conroys didn't own that one due to the paltry number of illusions it cast.

shelton ran the addresses we'd gathered through a database he used for bounty hunting. he gave a low whistle. "wow, there were some heavy hitters at the grotto that day."

"like who?" elyssa asked, leaning back in her chair, one hand clasping mine.

"otto strassman and bara nagal, for starters," he said, bringing up images of the two.

elyssa gasped at the second name. "bara nagal?" she said. "the grand master of the templar synod?"

"the one and the same," shelton said.

i looked at the images. otto was a tall, thin man with spectacles perched on a narrow nose. bara nagal's graying hair and the fine lines on his face marked him as middle-aged. both men were obviously very wealthy, judging from the numbers indicating net worth listed beneath the bios.

"otto is the head of the red syndicate," shelton explained.

i blinked at him. "wait, he's the head vampire?"

"this is too strange to be coincidence," elyssa said.

"bloody peculiar," stacey said, raising an eyebrow.

shelton flicked the image to that of an ordinary looking man. "this is william hodges, a power broker who works as a mediator for companies and individuals."

"who were in the other two limos?" i asked.

"i ran a search in my address database, but the residences they went to are titled by shell corporations." shelton stared at the large house in dunwoody. "i gotta say, this one looks really familiar, though." he snapped his fingers. "now i remember. when i was tracking cyphanis rax, this was one of several houses his fake corporations owned to keep his holdings secret."

"i don't like the sound of this," bella said. "if i had to guess, i'd say a high-powered meeting just took place in the grotto. for the actual leaders of factions to meet is unheard of, though. ambassadors and elected officials are the usual proxies."

shelton's jaw tightened. "i heard cyphanis is running in the special election to take the arcanus primus spot."

bigglesworth had killed jarrod sager, the former arcanus primus, a couple of months ago, but the man's death had been covered up until after the grand melee massacre during which a titanic golem, modified by one of daelissa's underlings, had attempted to kill the arcane council. several spectators and two council members had been killed as a result.

"did we ever find a solid reason for daelissa attempting to murder the arcane council?" i asked.

"i'm forming a theory," shelton said, eyes narrowing. "if cyphanis is meeting with these other bigwigs like he's already part of the club, it makes me wonder if he didn't have a part in her plan." he sat down. "my old man, sager, was tired of playing ball with daelissa. maybe she decided it was best to clean the slate and sent bigglesworth to kill him."

"two of cyphanis's cronies are vying to replace the murdered council members," bella said. "if they win, daelissa will have even more control."

"then why are the factions meeting?" i asked. "daelissa wants to break the alliance apart, not strengthen it."

"i can only think of one reason," shelton said, his face grim. "the seraphim created the vampires, right?"

i nodded. "yeah, it was the way angels awarded immortality to their best human servants. you think daelissa is trying to reignite the love?"

"she ain't stopping with the vampires," shelton said with a grimace. "i think she's working to create an alliance of her own. if cyphanis takes over as arcanus primus, you can bet he'll throw his support behind her when the crap hits the fan."

"that would explain why the conroys were there," i said. "but why would they choose the grotto as a meeting spot? wouldn't so many vips attract attention?"

"i think i know," elyssa said.

everyone turned their attention on her.

"the repaired mini-arches," she said.

shelton tapped a finger to his chin. "you think daelissa is showing them how she can access thunder rock and the alabaster arch?"

a shrug. "it's possible. maybe she wants them to know her army will be marching through any day now, using fear to forge an alliance."

bella made a thoughtful sound. "couldn't those factions stop her plans, though?"

"true," shelton said. "tipping her hand now would be premature unless she already has an agreement."

"in other words," i said, "we don't have a clue what's going on, just that something really bad is afoot, as usual."

"more or less sums it up," shelton said, and blew out a breath.

"we should refocus on the original objective," elyssa said. she winked at me. "baby steps."

i chuckled. "you're right."

"in case you don't remember," shelton said, folding his arms across his chest, and leaning back in his chair, "we don't know where that other limo went."

silence ensued, presumably as everyone went into deep thought. i wondered if shelton had connections with the people who controlled nom traffic cams and the like so we could cobble together a route using nom technology. provided we could access the footage, it might be the best way to go. if he didn't know anyone, maybe we could somehow get an image of the inside of the traffic control building and use the omniarch to get inside. i thought up all sorts of crazy schemes to get us that picture, when a much simpler solution presented itself.

"we know the general area the limousine went to," i said. "and you said we can track other vehicles from their points of origin."

"yeah," shelton said. his eyes brightened. "we could search that area for morning traffic and find out where it came from."

"great idea," elyssa said. "i was trying to figure out how to break into the nom traffic control buildings downtown so we could look at all their footage." she sighed. "i wasn't looking forward to that chore."

i grinned. "read my mind, babe."

shelton combed through the footage. thankfully, bruce had given us all the footage from one day, and the ases didn't record unless there was a magical vehicle present. he spotted a flying carpet zooming far above the city which the ases flagged red. we watched as a templar slider, their version of magical aircraft, intercepted the violator and hauled them away. shelton pinched his fingers to widen the view of the map and panned by, waving his hands across it until we saw the area where the possible conroy limo had vanished. we counted three total limos departing in a ten-mile radius. one of them went to an expensive country club. the other went north along the interstate until it vanished from the atlanta ota tracking zone, and was picked up by another authority.