Chapter 3

"Ninety miles an hour," I grumbled.

Darius had his eyes glued to the highway, pushing his rental sedan well past the posted speed limit as we left Florence in our dust.

"I just looked it up," I said, waving my phone. "This particular passenger train can hit speeds of up to ninety miles an hour. That's one hundred and forty five kilometers an hour in maple-syrup speak."

Darius didn't reply as he changed lanes to pass a semitrailer hauling a precariously large load of steel beams. Fortunately, a Tuesday afternoon wasn't prime time for traffic on this two-lane highway, allowing him to keep a heavy foot on the accelerator.

"Do you know what happens to the human body when it lands on something going ninety miles an hour?" I asked.

Darius didn't even glance at me.

"Because I don't!" I informed him emphatically. "But every ounce of common sense my favorite foster mom swore I had is telling me it isn't anything good."

"Have you located an overpass yet?" he inquired, as though I'd merely been commenting on the abundance of brown grass and blue sky surrounding us.

"Yes, obviously, or I wouldn't be resurrecting my high school algebra with train speed calculations."

He finally took his eyes off the road to give me a pointed look. "We don't need a precise calculation, Kit. We just need to slow the train down."

"How the hell are we going to do that?" I flipped open a new tab on my phone's browser to see if the internet had any advice on how to reduce the velocity of a literal speeding locomotive. "Unless you were recently bitten by a radioactive spider and are going to do some web-slinging shit."

Darius, as he had a habit of doing, did not respond to my pop-culture jocosity.

I found an online forum of delightfully detailed train enthusiasts nerding out over every conceivable aspect of railway life. I cross-referenced what I gleaned from their posts with the map I'd pulled up of our route along the interstate.

"There's an overpass a mile away," I told Darius. "If you're dead set on us James Bond-ing ourselves onto Tino's train, that's the best spot to do it. Passenger trains have to slow down near residential areas, and that overpass is right next to a school. I don't know if that technically qualifies as a residential zone, but there's also a town three miles away, and the train might already be slowing down for it by the overpass. If not…"

Darius glanced at me. "If not?"

"I can give them a little extra motivation to hit the brakes." I rolled my eyes up in thought. "Maybe a herd of cows crossing the tracks?"

"I believe cattle on the tracks is the reason many trains are fitted with cowcatchers."

A wild image of enormous baseball mitts corralling flying bovine launched from beef-loaded trebuchets popped into my head before I realized he meant those grates on the front of train engines for shunting obstacles off the tracks.

"Right." I racked my brain for something that would actually force a conductor to decelerate. "How about a school bus full of innocent children?"

"That should do the trick."

A few minutes later, we reached the overpass. Darius pulled the rental car onto the shoulder, and we both got out. A single lonely pickup truck roared past before we crossed to the opposite side of the overpass. A cement barrier prevented sleepy drivers from plummeting fifteen feet onto the railway below and seemed distinctly designed to prevent idiotic mythics from, oh, say, jumping over the edge with the intention of landing on top of a speeding train.

Said train was chugging along the tracks toward us, several football fields away. It was difficult to tell how many miles per hour less than its maximum human-obliterating ninety it was traveling, but I didn't really care. I was all for slowing it down as much as possible.

I concentrated, whipping up a school bus halluci-bomb that would extend far enough to reach the train conductor—or so I hoped. I didn't normally work at this sort of range. My imaginary big yellow tube on wheels approached the railway from an access road running parallel to the tracks, then hung a left to turn onto said tracks.

The train blasted its horn. Halluci-bomb success confirmed. I made the bus, now fully across the locomotive's path, jolt to a halt and rock back and forth as though it was stuck on the tracks.

Was that realistic? I didn't have the faintest idea. Would your average conductor be contemplating the realism of the bus full of innocent kids he was about to plow through? Hopefully not.

Another blast of the horn accompanied the train's brakes screeching like a demon's claws down the world's biggest chalkboard.

"It's working," I observed unnecessarily.

"So it is," Darius agreed, also unnecessarily. Maybe he wasn't quite as cool with this plan as he seemed. Maybe he even felt like I did—as though every molecule of his body was suddenly, violently allergic to trains and getting one inch closer to a train of any kind would result in instant petrification.

If the former assassin was afraid, he didn't show it as he swung his leg over the cement barrier. I copied his action, straddling the waist-high wall and doing my absolute best not to look down. Instead, I focused on my warp and the reassuring screech of brakes growing louder by the second.

Out of mercy for the poor, likely traumatized conductor, I didn't wait until the last possible moment to make the school bus reverse course. It backed off the rail line with a solid five seconds to spare before it would've been turned into a cloud of yellow shrapnel.

The train was almost below us and, from my perspective, still moving pretty damn fast. Being a choo-choo of the passenger variety, it had far fewer cars than your standard two-mile-long freight train, meaning Darius and I didn't have a whole lot of time to make our jump.

"Don't fall off," Darius suggested helpfully as he swung his other leg over the edge. Without another word, he jumped.

Holy shit, we were really doing this.

I looked down at the shiny roofs of the train cars speeding beneath the overpass. Darius had vanished—hopefully, he was safely hanging on somewhere and not bouncing around like a rag doll under the train's wheels.

I yanked my other leg over the cement barrier, and before the survival-centric part of my brain could convince me otherwise, I let go.

For some reason, I thought I'd have more time to adjust my body as I fell toward the train, but in reality, it was only six-ish feet below me, so I hit the roof almost immediately. My shoes hit the steel roof, friction yanked my feet out from under me, and I face-planted.

Inertia and a buffeting wind tried to rip me off the train car roof, and I slid a terrifying five feet before getting a painfully solid grip on a vent-type thing sticking up a few inches from the slick steel.

I clutched my handhold, heart beating so fast I was dizzy. A few deep breaths later, I dared to raise my head enough to see that I was sprawled on the front end of the second-to-last car.

"I can't believe that actually worked," I muttered, my voice whipped away by the wind.

I shimmied myself to the edge of the car, threw up an invisi-warp, and dropped onto the gangway connection. My leg buzzed as soon as my feet hit the steel, and it took me a moment to realize it wasn't the incessant vibrations of the train but my phone ringing in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a familiar name on the screen: Darius.

"You survived," I answered.

"As did you."

Another voice—distinctly nervous, almost to the point of squeaking—chimed in. "I'm also alive, thank you very much."

"Tino's on the line," Darius informed me.

I peered through a small window into the train car. "How ya holding up, Tino?"

"They're right outside," the archivist whispered. "All three of them! I think they're waiting for me to leave."

"Where are you, Kit?" Darius asked.

The car in front of me featured two rows of restaurant-style booths half-populated by hungry passengers.

"I'm right behind the dining car."

"I'm in the car in front of that one," Tino said.

"And I'm a couple cars farther ahead," Darius added. "Kit, I'll meet you in Tino's car and we'll come at them from both sides at once."

"The usual?" I suggested, layering my warp to hide the sight and sound of me opening the dining car door from the commuters inside.

"That seems best," he agreed. "Let's keep this quiet and bloodless. I'd prefer not to draw any attention."

Lucky for the two of us, we were both very good at moving around unseen.

"Got it," I told him as I closed the door and slipped through the dining car, taking care not to bump, brush, or otherwise disturb any of the travelers, who were all oblivious to my presence. I kept my phone to my ear, the call still active, but no one spoke. The only sound was Tino's nervous breathing.

I stepped onto the gangway connection joining the dining car to Tino's car. Through the window, I could see a man with an artificially platinum crewcut hovering near a closed cabin door. At the far end of the car, a handsome guy with wavy brown hair leaned casually near the door, ostensibly reading something on his phone. And the third Consilium goon, a woman with auburn bangs, square glasses, and a scowl that made her look like an evil version of Velma from Scooby Doo loitered near the door I was in the process of sneaking through.

"Are you ready, Darius?" I whispered into my phone, carefully closing the door behind me.

If Darius was already in position at the other end of the car, I couldn't see him—which was the whole point. He could use his lumina magic to bend light and make himself actually invisible, as opposed to my hallucinatory disappearing act.

"On your signal," came Darius's hushed voice.

"Whose signal?" Tino asked. "Should I run now?"

"Stay put," Darius told him. "Don't move until we reach you. I'm ending the call."

I pocketed my phone and focused on the minds of the three goons. Time for a Blackout Flash.

First, I hit the Consilium threesome with a super-quick Blackout warp, just long enough to disorient them but not so long for the inevitable screaming to start. Darius followed that up with a targeted blinding flash of light. It was a one-two combo that utilized the nastier bits of our psycho warping and lumina magic powers without burning up our stamina—and it left the three unprepared mythics reeling.

I sprang forward and clamped Evil Velma in a chokehold, dragging her to the ground as I dropped an easy—for me, not her—Funhouse fractal over her brain so she'd be too disoriented to fight back effectively. In my peripheral vision, I saw the handsome dude's head bounce off the wall. He slumped to the ground. Darius flickered in and out of sight as he shifted the light around himself.

Unfortunately, there were only two of us and three of them, meaning the platinum-haired goon—who had recovered from the Blackout Flash—was left wholly unsupervised. Apparently, saving his pals from invisible assailants was lower on the priority list than acquiring Tino's documents; he obliterated the archivist's door with a roundhouse kick full of so much rage that I figured his next step would be to rip Tino's head clean off his body before stealing the documents.

But he didn't get the chance.

With a frightened bellow, Tino charged out of his cabin, clinging to an old duffel bag like it was his security blanket. His appearance matched his voice almost too perfectly: short, slight, with small panicky eyes and a greasy bowl cut plastered to his skull.

He shouldered past the surprised blond goon and sprinted for the nearest escape—my end of the car. But he couldn't see me, only Evil Velma, who was half sprawled on the floor as I choked her. He jumped over her legs, hitting me square in the face with his duffel bag as he went.

I fell backward, chokehold and Funhouse warp broken. Tino flew out the door, and the blond goon charged after him. Evil Velma rolled to her feet, but when I jumped up to stop her, a solid weight collided with my back.

Invisible Darius had run into invisible me with enough force to knock me into the wall—and judging by the loud thump across from me, he'd collided with the opposite wall. I felt like a pinball in a comedy of errors machine.

Evil Velma reached the door but didn't run through it. She spun back around as her hands lit up with fireballs.

Oh, goody. A pyromage.

She clapped her hands together and a six-foot-tall pillar of flame filled the corridor before shooting forward. For a breathless second, all I could think was that I wished Lienna were here. Not only did her presence make just about everything better, but her abjuration sorcery was also uniquely handy at solving problems like, say, giant goddamn fireballs.

Darius grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me into Tino's abandoned cabin. The inferno roared past the open doorway toward the opposite end of the car, heat blasting us as it went.

Darius released his lumina magic, appearing a step behind me in the cramped quarters. "This is getting out of hand."

I dropped my invisi-warp. "Understatement of the month, Darry."

Re-invisifying myself, I poked my head out into the scorched corridor. The pyromage had gone through the exit, and I could see her just outside the dining car on the gangway connection. She was facing our way, a fireball glowing in her hand, ready to lob it through the open doorway at the first glimpse of an enemy.

This was less than ideal for multiple reasons.

For starters, neither my psycho warping nor Darius's light magic had any anti-inferno properties whatsoever. And second, this conflagrating crackpot was wielding her magic in full view of any unfortunate human passenger or staff member nearby.

"Any brilliant ideas?" I asked, sparing an extra bit of brainpower to opt Darius's mind out of my invisi-bomb. We didn't need another friendly fire collision to further complicate this decidedly un-straightforward mission.

"Distract her," Darius said. "I'll take her out."

"Shall do."

I hastened out of the cabin and into the corridor, stepping backward so Darius could go ahead of me. He vanished as I targeted Evil Velma's mind and considered which of the many distractions in my arsenal to smack her brain with. Since she was a fire-type Pokémon, I landed on my underutilized Fwoosh warp.

I concentrated on the roar of flames and their blistering heat, then applied all that imagination juice to the grapefruit-sized fireball in the pyromage's palm. It fwooshed into a cataclysmic combustion that exploded upward. She screamed and recoiled, so startled she didn't realize it was fake fire.

The open door clattered against the wall as an unseen Darius zipped onto the gangway connection. The pyromage slammed into the exterior of the dining car as he made contact, and a moment later, she collapsed unconscious.

Reappearing, Darius tossed a tiny potion vial off the train to shatter somewhere on the rocky ground bordering the tracks. He pulled the limp woman up with easy strength, and I held the door for him as he unceremoniously tossed her back into the car. The formerly handsome goon Darius had taken down was still lying at the other end, now thoroughly singed by his comrade's fire.

One goon left.

I was right behind Darius on the gangway connection, and as he blinked out of view, I added a fake door to my halluci-bomb before he opened it. I hurried in behind him.

For a second, I thought I'd stepped through a portal into a polar hellscape that looked like the sequel to Frozen as directed by Quentin Tarantino. It was, however, the dining car, but with snowy shards and icicles protruding from the walls and ceiling, frost covering every window, and all the poor humans who'd been enjoying a nice meal cowering under their tables.

The final goon was flailing in the middle of the aisle. Ice flew from his hands as he yelled incoherently. He looked like he was caught in my favorite Swarm warp, except all I was doing was keeping myself invisified.

The source of his distress was probably the fluorescent orange potion splattered all over his left arm. At the far end of the car, Tino was sheltering behind a table, his beady eyes fixed on the kryomage. He was holding what looked like a pistol-sized Super Soaker, its reservoir loaded with sloshing orange potion.

Huh. He hadn't been kidding about being armed.

Wasting no time, I hit the goon with a full Blackout Warp. He calmed down a little with his senses erased, which was a new one for me. What the hell was in that neon potion?

Darius popped back into view, produced another tiny vial, and dumped it on the man, who fell limp. The first time I saw him down a guy with one of those, I'd thought Darius had killed him with a super-assassin poison. But it turned out it was actually a super-assassin sleeping potion—an obscure, probably highly secret formula that left no trace on its victims.

As silence fell over the dining car, terrified humans cautiously poked their heads out from under their tables, eyes wide.

Since Darius was fully visible, I went ahead and dropped all my warps.

"Well," I drawled. "I guess we're getting a big, fat zero out of ten on the ‘not drawing attention' section of our report card."

Darius nodded, his gray eyes traveling across the wintry mess. "Do you know the Dissimulation Department's emergency number?"

I sighed. "Yeah."

"Call them."

My eyebrows rose. Didn't he know how much paperwork a DD call created? I'd be buried alive. "And you can't because…?"

Darius arched his brows to match mine. "Because I was never here."

Then he vanished.

Darius abandoned me.

It was better that no one from the MPD see us together, let alone write up a whole bunch of reports with both our names on them. I knew that. I understood that.

But I still didn't like being abandoned.

"So… what's an agent from Vancouver doing in Arizona?" the man in front of me asked with a professional lack of curiosity.

Agent Johnson, as he'd introduced himself, was the lead dude on a team of four Dissimulation Department agents. His three subordinates were currently aboard the stationary train behind us, corralling all the humans who'd witnessed the magipocalypse in the dining car so they could zap their memories into oblivion—not unlike Men in Black.

The DD agents' potions couldn't rewrite civilian memories the way Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones's neuralyzers could, but they fuzzed each unfortunate bystander's recollection of today's events enough to keep the sacred secrecy of magic intact.

"I was visiting friends," I told Agent Johnson. "Some guys in my fantasy hockey league. The season starts in a couple months, and we need to re-jig the rules. Last year, my buddy Travis got McDavid and Kucherov in the draft, so he kind of ran away with the whole season. Couldn't let that happen again."

Johnson made a note on his clipboard before asking in a deliberately not-skeptical tone, "You took a train to Maricopa to visit your fantasy hockey league?"

"No, I took a train to visit them in El Paso," I corrected, "and I'm on my way back to Phoenix to fly home. I'd never been on a train before, so I thought why not have some fun while I'm here, right? Though based on this experience, I'm not sure I'll be a return customer."

"So you just happened to be aboard at the right time to stop a coordinated mythic attack?"

And there was the skepticism.

"Lucky, eh?" I said, upping my Canadian accent. Canadians were simple, honest, puck-loving folk. We'd never, ever illegally board a train, death-battle the minions of a secret, corrupt cabal, then lie about it to the authorities.

Agent Johnson sighed. "Well, I'm glad you were there to intervene."

"Just doing my duty."

"And you don't know why they attacked human civilians in the dining car?"

"Nope."

"It's a shame they escaped while you were seeing to the civilians." Agent Johnson handed my ID and badge back. "I may need to follow up with additional questions, and you'll need to complete forms DD19?—"

"I know," I cut in before he could depress me with the full list. "Just email them to me, and I'll fill them out as soon as I'm back at my precinct."

He agreed, and a moment later, he was boarding the train to check on the memory-zapping. The first few passengers from the dining car were disembarking onto the platform, their expressions vague and confused, like docile zombies. Tomorrow, they'd all wake up with a nasty hangover and a weird sense that yesterday hadn't exactly gone to plan.

Brain erasure was just one of the Dissimulation Department's jobs. They were also the guys who took down websites and videos that hit too close to the truth, discredited and silenced loudmouthed whistle-blowers, and fueled the conspiracy-theory fires that had most of the public convinced magic was an idiotic joke.

The only time they actually showed up on-site was for big public-exposure oopsies. You know, like a kryomage turning an Arizona passenger train into the literal Polar Express.

For the most part, local agents managed minor incidents. It was part of our basic training, which was why I knew all the fun details of the potions those poor witnesses had been force-fed.

As I watched another passenger zombie-walk off the train, my gaze snagged on the nearby train car—the one where I'd fwooshed the pyromage into hysterics. Black scorch marks marred the exterior of the car all the way to its roof.

Weird.

Had she panicked and fired off a real fwoosh when I'd warped the fake fwoosh?

My phone buzzed, snapping me out of my musings. I pulled it out to find a text from Darius.

Our friend is on his way home, and the trash has been relocated. Come see me once you're back.

Typical assassin, not putting anything in writing unless it would self-destruct after being read.

Using my Darius decoder ring, I surmised that "the trash" was the three Consilium goons. We'd hauled them to the back of the train before reaching Maricopa, and when I'd gone to intercept Agent Johnson on the platform, Darius and Tino had dragged them away. The plan had been to dump them in some inconspicuous bed of cacti where they could sleep off Darius's potion.

They'd inevitably run back to their Consilium handlers, picking out succulent spines and reporting their failure, but it was better than letting the DD interrogate them. Who knew what they'd reveal?

We could have killed them, of course, but casual murder didn't sit well with me. We were supposed to be the good guys.

Plus, as Darius had mentioned, dead bodies tended to attract a lot of unwanted attention.

The "friend" from Darius's message had to be Tino. And if Tino was on his way home, that meant Darius had the documents we'd come for. The last set.

I pocketed my phone and strode across the platform, ready to put my Arizona adventure behind me. It was time to focus on the big picture: bringing down the Consilium.