Chapter 11

"Show me." Lienna had her arms crossed, a nervous set to her jaw.

I raised an eyebrow. "Show you what?"

"What you're going to do. I want to see it before she shows up."

Lienna, Agent Jack Cutter, and I were seated at a small table near the entrance of an independent café in Mount Pleasant. A handful of patrons loitered at small tables among stark white, minimalistic décor that Maggie would hate.

That was the problem. Maggie was one of my favorite people, but she was notoriously picky about shit like this. If she got the wrong vibes from a place, she wouldn't set foot in it. The first time we ever met for coffee—or tea, in her case—we'd tried three cafés before she approved of one.

This place's minimalist style was antithetical to Maggie's splashy, vintage aesthetic—but the location worked very well for my plan. So, to get Maggie in here, I would have to do some Redecorating. With a capital R.

I pointed at Lienna's anti-magic cat's eye necklace. "You'll have to take that off."

She hesitated. "If you try to pull anything…"

"You'll wreak untold horrors upon my flesh until I wish I was never born?"

"No." She flicked her hand at Agent Cutter, who shot me a menacing grin. "He will."

Agent Cutter's magic wasn't as scary as Lienna's, if I were to believe her interdimensional threats, but he was a telethesian—basically, a psychic bloodhound. The subtext was clear: escape was not an option.

"And I have a holding artifact that I've been told is extremely unpleasant," the lumberjack added.

Ah, that was the scary part. I've never experienced a holding spell firsthand, but I know they freeze the victim in place, rendering them utterly incapable of any movement aside from shallow breathing and the odd blink… if they're lucky. Unpleasant indeed.

"Don't worry," I said. "I won't do anything stupid."

Not yet, anyway.

With slow movements, as though I might lunge across the table, Lienna raised the cat's eye necklace over her head. Laying it carefully on the tabletop, she gave me the go-ahead nod.

I took off the shark-tooth necklace and dropped it beside hers, concealing my relieved sigh with a showy throat clear. As her petite nose scrunched suspiciously, I focused on the glimmer in my brain that was her mind—her essence, brainwaves, whatever. I don't have legit terms for this shit. I just follow my instincts.

Getting a nice, good focus on her, I changed the café's walls from clinical white to a warm muddy brown.

Lienna's eyes bulged, but no one else in the café even blinked.

Humming the Jeopardy tune, I morphed the linoleum floor to rustic hardwood, then changed the counters to match. How about an assortment of kitschy paintings I'd seen in a Wes Anderson movie for the walls? Sure, add those. A bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared beside the espresso machine. For flavor, I added an old jukebox in the back corner, then finished it off by warming the hue of the lights and dimming them enough to make things cozy.

"What do you think?" I asked.

Lienna's wide eyes bounced around the redecorated space. "No one else can see this?"

"Just you."

Truth be told, I could make everyone around us see what she was seeing, but I had zero plans to share that tidbit. First, suddenly altering every customer's perception would cause a certain amount of alarm. Second, it was more difficult. And third, both Lienna and Agent Cutter were on a "need to know" basis regarding my abilities.

And they needed to know as little as possible.

She glanced at her partner, who mumbled, "I don't see anything."

"So, it isn't an illusion?" she mused, a hint of wonder leaking into her tone.

I nodded. "More like a hallucination."

"But it looks so real. Is it limited to visual alterations?"

"Not entirely," I hedged. Visual hallucinations were the easiest, and audio hallucinations weren't too bad. I could alter smell if I needed to, but taste and touch were next-level difficult.

I let the vision die, returning Lienna's perception of the room back to its former austere glory.

She shook her head. "I've never seen a mythic do that before. I don't even know what a power like that would be called."

That made two of us.

I didn't need to know what my ability was called—it didn't require a label to function properly—but there was something satisfying, maybe even empowering, about putting a title on it and being able to refer to part of your identity by name.

She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully, then a small smile curved her mouth. "You really are unique, Kit. Your abilities are something else. Being able to—"

Agent Cutter gave a discreet cough, and she straightened, maybe realizing her voice had gone too warm and relaxed. Much more "movie night pals" than "agent in charge of a dangerous criminal."

"Remember," she told me sternly, "if you lose control of the situation, it's our job to take Maggie Cook in. Captain's orders."

"You got it, boss." I shifted my gaze to the window. "By the way, she's coming."

A woman in her thirties was speed-walking toward the café. She wore paint-stained overalls and a bright yellow rain slicker, but its hood didn't hide the Smurf-blue hair and oversized, thick-rimmed glasses.

Agent Cutter and Lienna scrambled off their seats. As she reached for the two necklaces, my hand shot out and I swiped them off the tabletop. Grinning, I held up her necklace, the cat's eye swinging.

She plucked it out of my hand and hurried after her temporary partner. They dropped into a booth at the back where they could keep watch over me, and she looped her anti-magic necklace over her head, the cat's eye bouncing against her chest. She caught my gaze and offered a sneaky smile of encouragement that Agent Cutter didn't notice.

I curled my hand around the second necklace, the pendant clenched in my fist.

By the time Maggie reached the door, I'd locked onto her mind. To her eyes, the café was rustic and charming instead of a poorly sterilized hospital cafeteria. A gust of chilly, wet air swept inside as she opened the door.

Now the real test of my abilities began—holding the hallucination while carrying on a perfectly natural conversation that would require its fair share of lying, manipulation, and careful questioning.

Yeah, this would be fun.

Maggie's gaze darted across every patron, checking for threats, then she scurried to my window-side table, assessing the room once more as she came.

"Hey, Kit," she greeted with a smile.

Standing, I reached out for a quick hug. "Hey, Maggie."

As my arms closed around her narrow shoulders and her odd, dusty lavender perfume tickled my nose, I quashed a nervous twist in my gut. Focus, I reminded myself. Hold the projections.

And keep my guilt tamped down real tight.

As I dropped back into my seat, she sat across from me, her eyes moving in a ceaseless search for danger. "Are you sure this place is safe?"

I made a show of peering around. "Looks safe to me."

Her shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. "It does… it does. I like this place."

Mission accomplished. Well, sort of. Making her comfortable enough to talk was only part one.

Before I could launch into part two, she smiled. "I'm glad you're safe, Kit. Very glad."

"I got lucky." Sort of true. I wasn't dead, after all.

"KCQ was bad, bad news. I'm happy you're free of them."

"You heard what happened?" I asked cautiously.

"I heard most of your people got rounded up. I heard Rigel was killed." She hesitated. "One of the Smoke and Mirrors guys heard a story about you down in LA."

As far as the public was concerned, Smoke and Mirrors was a special effects company for the movie industry, but non-mythics had no clue how special those effects were.

That's what Maggie did. Aside from whipping up ultra-safe, cool-looking explosions for major film studios, she was one of the best alchemists in the city. She could transmute almost anything, if you gave her enough time, and she had a knack for spells that involved astrology.

"That wasn't me," I lied, pressing my thumb into the pendant hidden in my lap. "It was probably another KCQ intern."

"Could be." She fiddled with one of the many rings on her fingers. "You said on the phone that you were looking for information."

"Have you heard about Quentin?"

"Yes, yes. He's on the run now. Have you talked to him??"

I shook my head. "I couldn't reach him. But I talked to Jenkins—his diviner. Quentin's mentioned him to you before, right? According to Jenkins, Quentin went to him for a reading about Blue Smoke."

Maggie blinked rapidly. "Blue Smoke. Do you know…?"

"I don't know the details," I said, mixing lies with truth, "but Rigel was going to bring me in before he kicked the bucket."

Her attention skirted around the café again. "Why? What do you want with Blue Smoke?"

I honed my focus on her mind. If I let any part of the hallucination slip—if the paint on the walls faded, or the hardwood warped, or the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bobblehead twitched unnaturally—the whole facade could fail. And that would screw up my plan in a big way.

"I'm worried about Quentin. MagiPol is all over him, and Blue Smoke is… dangerous."

"Dangerous," she repeated softly.

"Quentin is my friend. I want to help him, but I don't know enough." I leaned across the table. "You're one hell of an alchemist, and if Rigel had you freelancing for him, you must know something about Blue Smoke."

Swallowing, she stood from the table. "I need some tea."

While she placed her order at the counter, I glanced at the ever-vigilant pair at the back of the café. Lienna, as always, had one hand on her satchel, and the other was fidgeting with the chain of her necklace, as though reassuring herself it was firmly in place and protecting her mind.

I really wished she'd stop doing that. It was making everything that much more difficult.

Returning to the table and sliding on her chair, Maggie blew gently on her steaming tea. "I always felt you were different from the rest of the KCQ members, Kit."

I smiled. "I thought the same thing when I first saw you there."

There was no lie in that. Her boldly dyed hair, disdain for anything that resembled office attire, and warm smile had caught my attention—mainly because she'd looked as out of place in the Psychica guild as I'd felt. That unexpected kinship had led to a casual conversation that had grown into a casual friendship, one with more warmth and genuine kindness than any relationship I'd formed during my tenure with KCQ.

"They were a greedy, greedy bunch," she murmured. "Desperation may make men evil, but greed makes evil men worse."

"I've never cared about money. I was just—"

"I know, I know. You were finally in a place that accepted you. I understand. I do. But you never belonged there. You aren't the greedy type. Rigel and the others, greed was in their blood. They reached beyond the world of lawyers and contracts."

I waited for her to continue.

"Do you know Cerberus, Kit?"

"The security guild?"

"Blue Smoke was a plan to break into Cerberus."

My spine went rigid. Break into Cerberus? That was nuts, even by KCQ standards.

Cerberus wasn't your standard locks and alarms anti-theft company. It was a guild of security experts—the best of the best, with an arsenal of damn near unbreakable spells for keeping valuable things safe, and people paid a good hunk o' cash for their services.

"There's been a rumor for years that Cerberus is holding on to a deep, dark secret," Maggie whispered. "A dangerous artifact. Very dangerous, very powerful. The whole purpose of Blue Smoke was to steal it. I don't know where he got that name from. Blue Smoke?"

"Was he a Scott Bakula fan?"

"What?"

"Never mind." Now was not the time for stupid jokes. I peeked sideways at our two-agent audience, then hardened the hallucinations I was projecting. "So, what was the point of it all? They wanted to steal this crazy powerful artifact to do what with it?"

"I don't know, but the answer is the same no matter what." She swirled her tea in her mug. "Greed, Kit. It's always about greed."

"And you were a part of Blue Smoke?"

"No. Well, yes. At first. I helped set up protections for a vault. Rigel wanted a place to store valuable items, and he likes my alchemy over sorcery. Especially using astral keys for a door that can only be opened on a specific day."

Hmm. The murder trap in Rigel's secret lair fit the bill for Maggie's alchemy, but it wasn't what I'd call a vault. "A specific day? What do you mean?"

Her eyes lit up; she loved talking about her work. "A seal that is unassailable except on one day of the month. Once Rigel locked it, he wouldn't need to guard it, even from his own cohorts, except on that one day." She smirked. "I chose the waning third crescent moon."

"The what now?"

"The moon at one-third visibility. I'd hoped its slowly dying light might remind him of the cost of his greed."

I squeezed my temples. "So his plan was to steal this valuable artifact from Cerberus and store it in the vault? Wasn't he planning to sell the artifact? That's the Rigel thing to do, and it wouldn't require an unassailable vault."

"I don't know. As soon as he told me the vault's purpose, and that he wanted my help with the theft, I walked away." She studied the contents of her mug. "Rigel had no right to such an artifact. It belongs in the hands of someone who isn't driven by greed."

I switched from temple squeezing to rubbing my hands over my face, debating what to ask next. I didn't strictly need this information, but I wanted to cover all my bases before I began Phase Two.

"Strange…"

I jerked my hands down to find Maggie squinting at something over my shoulder. Shit, shit, shit. Had I let part of the hallucination slip? There were a lot of pieces to keep track of and my mental energy was flagging.

"What?" I asked cautiously.

"Something feels off about this place." Her eyes resumed their paranoid dance around the room. "Are you doing something?"

Maggie knew what my abilities were. If she sensed something wasn't right, I couldn't fault her for suspecting me.

Unfortunately, her inside knowledge meant I had to work even harder to fool her. When I get distracted or fatigued, my hallucinations start to go a bit wonky, uncanny-valley style. Most people don't notice anything more than an unsettling itch in their subconscious—but those who know why they might be feeling that way can spot the incongruities way faster.

She pierced me with a worried stare. "Kit, what's going on?"

According to the plan I'd proposed to Blythe, this was the point where I should give Lienna and Agent Cutter the signal to move in and arrest Maggie.

But Maggie was kind, compassionate, and generous—three things that were hard to come by in this city. She might redefine the word "quirky," and she might operate on the shadier side of the law once in a while, but she was also the woman who'd invited me into her home for Christmas after finding out I had no plans and hadn't celebrated a holiday in years.

Even if I hadn't had an alternate plan from the start, I wouldn't have delivered her into the world of holding cells and gray jumpsuits that had entrapped me.

Leaning closer, I whispered, "I'm going to show you something, and I need you to stay calm."

She nodded nervously. I gave her a hard look, ensuring she was prepared.

Then I let the café hallucination die.