36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

‘Eben?’ I repeated. I was in a state of shock. He was one of us . Why would he harm us? Was he MIB too? The thought made me sick, but some supernats did work with the MIB.

That tickled something at the back of my mind and I thought back. The first time Eben and I had met he’d said he was a witch then he’d later claimed to be a shaman. He’d said he was from the village where Danny had grown up, Nome, but they’d never given the slightest indication that they’d ever met before. I’d put that down to it being a big town; I certainly didn’t know every Portlock resident. But the truth was, Eben may never have set foot in that village. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single occasion when he’d done anything supernat at all. Not ever.

George and Harry also looked shocked. ‘Has Eben ever performed magic around any of you?’ I asked slowly. They shook their heads.

Dammit, he was a plant. Had I inadvertently let anything slip about the attaché case in his presence? I skimmed my memories: no, I hadn’t, thank goodness.

The only thing that stood out about Eben was his secretiveness and quiet judgement, even during supernat classes. We’d accepted him without question, despite his dour demeanour; well, more fool us. The MIB had needed someone within our group because supernats were hard to bring down; they’d needed someone to get up close and personal with us to take us down without killing us. I felt sick. The whole time Eben had been working against us.

How had I not suspected his involvement? Great detective I was turning out to be. The State Trooper Academy was being overrun by the MIB and they were removing supernats and handing them over to a shady black-ops group. They were planning to turn the Alaska State Troopers into a Gestapo group to eliminate supernats. I felt like I’d been dropped behind enemy lines in World War Two – or World War Three, for that matter.

‘We have to get back,’ Danny said urgently. ‘Margi has no one to look out for her.’ Not only was Margi in danger but the papers were at risk every second we delayed. But we couldn’t go yet because Sidnee was still hip-deep in body disposal – literally.

‘We can’t leave Sidnee,’ Connor said before I did.

‘Yeah,’ I added. ‘She’s taking care of our business and she’s vulnerable if any more MIB show up.’ The MIB had to have a ship somewhere out there and there could be a lot more of them aboard. We were sitting ducks.

Then it hit me: we’d killed MIB, and/or some of the black-ops group. My heart gave a single hard thump. ‘We especially want the vamp,’ ran through my head. We were already on their radar and they’d been planning to kidnap me.

My legs felt weak. If Connor hadn’t reached out and rested his hand in the small of my back, I might have fallen. His presence, his love and his steadying hand shored me up, and my legs stopped shaking. This was no time for me to freak out; we needed to find Sidnee and get the hell back to Margi.

The door to the warehouse swung open and we all jumped. Connor leapt in front of me – but it was a wet and naked mermaid. ‘Uh, what’s up?’ she asked curiously, as though we hadn’t sent her out with a bunch of bodies and weaponry to dispose of. Her eyes were soft brown and her teeth normal. My Sidnee was back.

I hurried over and handed over her clothes then stood in front of her to give her a bit of privacy, although it was clear she couldn’t care less. Once she was dressed, she wrung out her hair and quickly braided it.

‘We need to go,’ I said urgently. ‘The short version, Eben is one of them and he’s alone with Margi.’

She reeled back. ‘Eben? Quiet Eben? But he’s so sweet.’

That hadn’t been my experience because he’d hardly connected with us, but this was Sidnee and she thought most people were sweet. ‘It turns out he wasn’t so sweet after all,’ I said grimly.

We hurried back to Connor’s truck. The three men and Fluffy climbed in the back, and Sidnee squeezed into the cab with me, Connor, and a sleeping Shadow. We took off, wheels spinning as we sped back to the academy.

‘We need a story, something about what happened to Danny that the humans will understand.’ I’d been worrying about that ever since Danny had woken up. We couldn’t tell the truth so we needed something believable to keep Fischer off our radar. He needed to think we were still clueless.

I reached behind us and opened the sliding window that went through to the back of the truck. ‘Hey,’ I called. ‘We have to get our stories straight for the humans.’

‘I’ll say I fell, hit my head and got lost wandering in the wrong direction,’ Danny offered. ‘Fluffy tracked me down by the road.’

‘We’ve been gone longer than that, plus there’s no bump on your head. They’ll check you for a concussion,’ Sidnee objected. She was right; they’d want him to see a doctor.

‘We could say I fell into that abandoned mine, the one Connor hid in?’ Danny suggested.

‘No. They’ll investigate, try to seal it back up and know immediately that’s not true,’ I replied.

‘A sinkhole?’

Before I could answer that it would be the same for a sinkhole, Harry’s steady voice came from the back. ‘Danny was dehydrated and became disoriented. He wandered for a while, realised he was lost and hunkered down. He was planning to wait until morning to find his way out of the woods. His headlamp was dead and he didn’t have his phone. The dog can still have found him.’

‘Simple, and believable,’ Connor said. ‘Danny, do you have your phone?’

‘No, I left it behind. We were supposed to be without tech.’

‘What about your headlamp?’

‘It must have fallen off.’

Connor nodded. ‘Okay. In case someone has found it, you say it died, you discarded it and you don’t know where it is.’

‘Yeah, that’s better,’ Danny agreed.

‘Perfect. Everyone got the story straight?’ Everyone responded in the affirmative, including a sharp bark from Fluffy.

Connor turned left and the academy loomed up on the hill ahead. ‘Here we go.’ He pulled to the front and parked. The men in the back climbed out slowly and carefully as though they were exhausted, which they probably were; I knew I was close to being unconscious. Maybe I’d get better at mesmerising in the future, but for now it left me weaker than a day-old baby.

Like me, Sidnee – who’d done the most work – looked like she was hanging on by her fingernails. We were vulnerable right now, which was all the more reason for Fischer to believe the BS we were peddling.

I placed Shadow on the passenger side seat and slipped out. The poor exhausted little fella didn’t stir when we shut the doors.

We gathered together and went through the front doors. Recruits and officers were scattered about the building, but someone noticed us and a shout rang out. ‘You found him!’ Several people pulled out phones to call their friends or fellow squad mates to tell them to come back in

‘Go check on Margi,’ I whispered to Sidnee before we were surrounded by a lot of relieved-looking recruits. Sidnee slipped away.

Danny was being hugged and clapped on the back. Lieutenant Fischer was glaring at our group from where he was leaning against the wall next to the reception window. He had slightly more than a five o’clock shadow and I wanted to smirk because I knew that we’d been stressing him out. He was the only one, besides whatever MIB plants there were and possibly Sergeant Marks, who knew the truth.

A table had been set up with doughnuts, coffee and hot chocolate for the searchers. They’d been going out on rotation to avoid getting too wet and cold, as well as to get some rest. We went to get a sorely needed hot drink.

Fifteen minutes later, Sergeant Marks burst through the door, took one look at us and pulled Danny into a brief man hug. ‘Are you alright? What happened?’ He looked sincere and I really hoped he wasn’t one of them .

I heard Danny start to recite the story we’d come up with, but Sidnee was signalling me from the stairs and I couldn’t hang around to listen. I squeezed Connor’s hand, pointed at Sidnee and left him with Danny, Fluffy and the others, then I slipped behind the crowd and ran up the stairs.

It was dark upstairs and no one seemed to be around. ‘Margi isn’t in our room,’ Sidnee said grimly. ‘I checked everywhere upstairs. She’s not here and neither is Eben.’

‘Shit. Do we know if they made it back?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they’re missing.’

‘We have no choice. Let’s go back downstairs and ask if anyone has seen them.’

We rejoined our group. People were fussing over Fluffy, who was accepting the admiration with a lolling tongue and a happy wagging tail. Connor was leaning against the entrance, staying out of the way. I joined him. ‘Margi isn’t upstairs. We’re going to ask around.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll wait.’

We spread out, casually asking if anyone had seen Margi or Eben. Of all people, it was Thorsen who responded. ‘Yeah, I saw them a couple of hours ago. Maybe they went back out to search?’ He still wasn’t showing any antagonism; either my mesmerising was still working or he didn’t know Margi was supernat. But if Eben was working with the MIB, surely Thorsen knew the identity of all the supernats were – so that meant my mes was holding.

I grimaced at his comment. Margi and Eben hadn’t gone back outside to help; Margi would have waited inside because she knew that Danny had been kidnapped, so she wasn’t going to wander around aimlessly for hours. That meant that Eben had her secured somewhere, most likely on campus – and I thought I knew where. It was the one place that was more forbidden than the offices, somewhere that was locked against even the officers: the plant room under the building.

I sidled over to Sidnee and Connor. We had to distract the lieutenant so we could slip away from his watchful gaze to the basement. Occasionally a recruit grabbed Fischer’s attention and they’d chat, but that wasn’t enough; I needed him to be drawn away for more than a few minutes.

‘We need a big distraction,’ I said to Sidnee. ‘A big one. Even Fluffy wouldn’t be distraction this time. We need an explosion – or a fire.’ I looked at my companions. ‘I have an idea.’

‘Let me guess. It involves fire?’ Sidnee asked sarcastically.

I grinned. ‘It totally does. You guys go to Fluffy and get everyone’s eyes on you for a minute. I need to disappear.’

Connor and Sidnee joined the crowd that was still adoring Fluffy, and Sidnee immediately started talking about his exploits when we’d helped her back home in ‘Seldovia.’ Even the lieutenant wandered over, probably because he’d had his eye on Connor. He had to know who and what Connor was – the MIB would be familiar with the vampire king of America’s son. But Connor could handle himself so I melted to the back of the throng and escaped.

I needed a place where I’d be completely alone and I found it in one of the smaller classrooms. I checked the corridor and slipped inside when no one was looking. I left the lights off.

I let my rage at the entire situation fill my body. Killing those soldiers, the kidnapping, the MIB trying to take away my rights, Eben’s betrayal, my mother – the heat that simmered in my core strengthened. I stoked it until a ball of flame gathered in my chest and I focused it through my hands, then lifted them above my head and aimed for the sensors above me before I let go.

It was time to fight fire with fire.