36. Chapter 36

Iwatched the two people I cared about most in the world waltz into the Supernatural Alliance"s main headquarters from my place in the shadowy in between. The little shiver of apprehension that washed through me just wasn"t like me. I devoured fear and fed on terror. But I rarely felt them.

Both the necromancer and the witch were coated in disguise charms that hid both their physical looks and their magical signatures. Using the information Elijah and I had gathered on our previous scouting visit, they entered the building separately, just two new hires reporting to their previously assigned areas. That was a bit of Aahil"s handiwork; he and Hasumi had come up with a way to infuse a bit of the jinn"s possession magic into a pair of charms that allowed Andy and Dyre to draw from Andy"s connection to the jinn, so she could tap into the jinn"s magic and nudge the memories and perception of the people around them just enough to make them buy the new employee story.

Our previous interactions with the SA had involved Andy and a heavily disguised Dyre working as actual temporary employees in this building, so they did at least have a basic understanding of how things worked. It wasn"t an incredibly clever or inventive plan, but it only had to work long enough for them to bluff their way to the two artifacts they were after and get out. We had already mapped out where the amplifier and the nullifier were being kept. They were on the same floor as a bunch of other strong magic objects, but unfortunately kept on opposite ends of that level.

I slid through the colorlessness of my natural realm and manifested just enough to peer through at Andy as she stepped off the elevator and onto the fifth floor, where the artifacts were being stored. She looked around as if she were lost, then headed off down the hall as if in search of assistance. This floor was quiet. There were a couple of SA agents manning a desk where they monitored who had access to this level. One of them sat up straighter, on instant alert, as Andy approached.

"This floor is restricted," the witch informed Andy in sharp tones. "Clearance badge?"

She huffed. "This place is a maze. I was looking for the cafeteria so I could get a coffee before I started training." She fluffed her currently blonde hair and ran a hand over her hourglass, pencil-clad illusion as she got close enough to lean on the counter. "I don"t suppose you could draw a girl a map or something?"

And just that fast, she planted her hand on the man"s arm and used some kind of wraith ability borrowed from Sunny to drain the man"s aura so fast he fainted.

We didn"t have to be inconspicuous about this whole operation. It wasn"t a secret that Andy and her crew had a bone to pick with the SA. We just needed to not get caught long enough to get the job done. "The other guard went to the bathroom a few minutes ago. She should be back any time now," I said, projecting my voice without materializing. I didn"t want to risk tripping the security wards that were set up to sense incorporeal intrusion. They didn"t seem to sense me as long as I stayed mostly in the in-between. But the moment I stepped through into ordinary reality, I was sure I"d be caught. I could sense the potential magic hovering there, wards watching and waiting.

Andy grumbled something under her breath about stress and premature aging as she hurried around the counter and yanked the man"s badge and signet ring off. She had just straightened when the elevator arrived on the floor with a faint ping.

"Don"t worry. It"s Dyre." I whispered, even though I knew she must be able to sense the black aura just as well as I could—maybe even better than I could, thanks to the lifebond.

She nodded and strode back that way. When the elevator doors slid open, she didn"t pause, just nodded at Dyre and kept going, headed toward the end of the hall, where the nullifier was kept. "Bathroom," she murmured to him.

Dyre"s currently stocky, nondescript form hurried out of the elevator and toward the bathroom while Andy set about disabling the wards and security in her room. The necromancer stepped into the bathroom. I remained hovering just out of perception in the hallway, where I could keep an eye out for newcomers. But from the faint muffled sounds and the surprised grunt that came from the bathroom, I"d say Dyre was doing just fine on his own. He emerged from the bathroom with a badge and signet ring clutched in his hand and set off in the opposite direction from where Andy had gone, toward where the amplifier was kept.

Thankfully, both artifacts were kept in warded cases so their innate magic wouldn"t affect the surrounding area. That would have been a nightmare to manage otherwise. I slipped through the in between and emerged in the room with Dyre, watching as he smoothly overpowered and shorted out the protections around the artifact"s case and shoved it into the messenger bag he wore slung across his chest.

Precious seconds ticked by. It was only a matter of time before something tipped the SA off and we were discovered. Deactivating the protections had probably set off an alarm somewhere, for all we knew. The anticipation would have been fun… if it weren"t Dyre and Andy in the crosshairs.

When we emerged back into the hallway, Andy wasn"t there. She must still be trying to free her artifact from its protections. She should have been done already, since she had a head start over Dyre. Another chill of unaccustomed fear went through me as I slipped through the in-between and moved to peer at her from behind the veil.

She dropped the final ward just as I arrived. Picking up the case that held the nullifier, she slipped it into her messenger bag. An alarm started blaring from somewhere deep inside the building.

"Fuck," she muttered. "Time to get the hell out of here."

Dyre burst into the room. "What"s taking so long, Lovell? Waiting to give them the finger before we leave?"

They couldn"t portal directly out of the SA building. There were powerful protections in place to prevent it. And on top of that, Andy already struggled to portal between reality and the pocket world without interference. We needed to get out onto the street so Andy could open up one of her shaky portals home. That was going to be much more difficult now that they were onto us. I trailed after Andy and Dyre, still undetectable in my shadow world, but ready to push forward into the material plane the moment I was needed, consequences bedamned.

They nearly made it to the ground floor before they were caught.

A fire door slammed open at the foot of the stairwell, and an armed SA agent burst out, knocking into Dyre and Andy. "Freeze!" he shouted, his voice ringing in the echoing space just outside the stairwell. Andy and Dyre both pulled on their magic, but the man didn"t pause. He simply stumbled as if he"d been struck, dropping his gun and clumsily managing to "accidentally" kick it toward Andy, his back to the security cameras. "Hostage," he hissed impatiently as he formed crackling balls of magic in his palms too slowly to do him any good.

I suddenly realized why his face looked so familiar. He was one of the field mage Jacki"s people. "Holst!" Andy bit out. "What the hell are you doing? Don"t make us fry you."

He huffed. "I know it"s you, nitwit. Now subdue me and hold that gun to my head before the rest of my unit comes bursting in. Higher ups have split us up, and my new unit is not sympathetic. Our agents have already got you surrounded, and all your exits are cut off."

Shit.

Andy scrambled to do as the man said. It could be some sort of setup. Maybe a ploy to make her look even worse in the eyes of the public. A villain who robbed the protectors of the people and taken a hostage. The verdict was still out on field mage Jacki and her people. Given our history, no one was really sure whether they could be trusted. But there was no time to ask questions or argue about that at the moment.

"He"s right," Dyre snapped, suddenly tense. "Sunshine can sense the souls around us. They were masking themselves somehow."

I swore silently from my hiding place. I could sense them now, too. I had no idea how they had hidden their auras, but there were at least a dozen people closing in from the stairs, elevators, and hallways.

"Down the hallway there, first office on the left. Get to the spot behind the desk," Holst murmured with a sharp jerk of his head. "Use me as a shield until you get there. There"s a spell circle under the carpet that makes a dead spot where you can form a portal."

Andy and Dyre leapt into motion, dragging their fake hostage with them. SA people burst into the hallway from the stairwell and the elevator seconds later, but they hesitated when they saw the mundane gun pressed to Holst"s temple. "Back the fuck off or you get to see his brains, then yours," Dyre commanded in an icy tone that wasn"t quite human. "Then the fun will really begin."

"You can"t hide behind a hostage forever," one of the SA agents called. "You"ll mess up, and we"ll end you. Painfully. Give up now, Lovell, and we"ll make it less painful."

It probably wasn"t a stretch of the imagination for them to assume they were dealing with the evil Lovell witch and her servants… but, still, that could be concerning. Had someone told them we were coming? Again, there was no time to ask questions.

Andy was too busy hauling Holst around and holding the gun to give them the finger, but like any good partner in crime, Dyre helpfully did it for her as they continued to hurry down the hallway toward the room Holst had indicated. It seemed like Jacki"s man had been stationed here to look out for this little heist. And the spell circle had to be Jacki"s doing. Maybe they were truly on our side after all. I slid along after them, keeping to the shadows of the otherworld, but staying close.

They had almost made it behind the large mahogany desk when one of the SA agents let loose a bolt of raw magic that would have taken out Andy, Dyre, and their erstwhile hostage. Dyre moved quickly, with all the instinct of a creature well-used to people trying to murder him. He shoved Holst right into the path of the oncoming missile, grabbed Andy, and whirled away. The move kept them from being fried by displaced magic when the SA agent hastily disbursed the magic to keep from killing his comrade. But it also took Andy and Dyre further away from the dead area where the spell circle was. They couldn"t portal out of here from just anywhere in the room.

"Going somewhere?" A woman"s cold voice asked, right as Director Strom stepped into the place they were aiming for, a glowing pentagram already primed in her hand. That was a killing curse. An illegal one, but who was surprised?

The director was now blocking Andy and Dyre from getting out. More SA agents were pouring into the room. Backed into a corner and outnumbered, I could already see how this would go. And I knew no matter what he might say, Dyre would hate himself for the carnage he was about to rain down on these people.

I didn"t think about what I was doing, I just moved. Pressing forward past the veil, I grabbed one of Andy"s arms and one of Dyre"s. Then I wrapped my magic around them and stepped backward into the void.

We fell sideways, in that disconcerting way that happened sometimes in this place. Up, down, and sideways were subjective terms in the in-between. My feet found purchase and I oriented myself and my passengers to an upright position among the ethereal wisps of gray that resolved into buildings, lost ghosts, and all the other things that lurked in this place.

I had never taken another living being into the in-between. They didn"t belong here. And I was already feeling the wrongness of what I had just done.

I glanced at Andy to find her outline… blurred. Like grains of sand lifting off her and blowing away in the wind. She was colorless, but for her eyes, which glowed with green and blue, their grayness full of color compared to the nothingness and shadows around us. I could see the outline of her aura leeching away, pulled into the ether by whatever hungry force sucked all life from this place. I had never seen it do that before. It didn"t feed on me. But I was a creature of shadow and fear. Andy and Dyre were living, breathing things in a realm meant for the unseen horrors that lurked at the edges of consciousness.

I whipped my head around to find that Dyre was bleeding essence as well. A bit more slowly than Andy, probably because of the wraith inside him, but bleeding away all the same. And Dyre had little lifespark left to lose. I had a feeling his tether to life was tenuous at best. Another alien surge of panic rose up inside me. I was usually immune to fear. But right then, I knew true terror.

I pulled at Andy and Dyre, attempting to move them through the darkness and back toward the material realm, hoping to land us outside the SA so Andy could portal us home. But it was like attempting to tow a couple of stone monoliths through an ocean of molasses.

In my hasty attempt to save them, I may have just killed them both.