Chapter 14

When I stumbled into the twenty-four-hour convenience store, soaking wet and shivering, the eighteen-year-old behind the counter would've been on the phone to the cops in an instant—if that's what I'd let him see.

Instead of the trembling, hunched-over mess that I was, I showed the clerk an upright and thoroughly dry version of myself. The hallucination Kit smiled in greeting and ambled into the beef jerky section.

Meanwhile, I stood just inside the door, rubbing my hands together and dripping water on the floor. After all that effort to keep my clothes dry, it'd started pouring rain three minutes after my exit from the ocean. Mother Nature had a cruel sense of humor.

My ribs felt like they were covered in frost, but I didn't let that interfere with the hallucination I was projecting into the clerk's mind. While I remained invisible, my doppelganger somberly debated between Butter Mesquite and Chicago Smoke jerky, his head bobbing back and forth.

I could thank Douchebag Dwayne for my mastery of this skill, which I'd affectionately dubbed Split Kit. It'd started out as a trick in school—fooling my teachers into thinking I was paying attention while I doodled or read a book. It wasn't until I met Dwayne and his swinging fists that I learned to make myself entirely invisible.

As I sent fake-Kit toward the candy aisle, I tiptoed around the counter to join the clerk. His cell phone sat beside the register, and I made the device invisible as I palmed it. I prodded the screen. No passcode. Perfect.

Retreating to the corner, I sent fake-Kit in the opposite direction—though not toward the cooler doors with their shiny glass. Reflections were way too tricky to pull off while distracted.

Dialing the number I'd memorized three days ago, I lifted the phone to my ear. It rang. And rang… and rang and rang. Finally, it went to voicemail, and my heart sank.

"Jenkins, it's Kit," I murmured in a low tone so my voice wouldn't carry to the clerk. "I escaped. I'm at a convenience store south of Deep Cove. On Dollarton Highway, I think. If you can find me, I could use your help."

As I disconnected the call, I realized the clerk was squinting at fake-Kit in confusion. Shit on a stick. I was losing my grip on the hallucination and its uncanniness was coming through.

Hurrying into the nearest aisle, I stuffed my pockets full of Slim Jims, Sour Patch Kids, and a couple bottles of water. Meanwhile, fake-Kit approached the clerk.

"Hey," he asked casually, "do you know where the nearest hotel is?"

The clerk frowned. "The closest one is by the cove. Or back toward town. I think there's one by Capilano."

"Nothing closer?"

"Nah, man."

Damn it. I couldn't go back to Deep Cove because there was an excellent chance that Lienna and Agent Cutter were hunting for me in that area. Capilano was a long way away.

Fake-Kit wished him a good night, then we both exited and coalesced into a single entity.

Pulling my hood over my head against the steady rain, I crossed the parking lot back toward the sidewalk. If Jenkins came through for me, this was where he'd show up, so I didn't want to go far.

Half a block down the street, a bus stop with a glass-walled shelter posed under a yellow streetlight. Good enough. I hurried into the shelter and collapsed onto the bench, rain drumming against the metal roof. My shoulders, which had been squeezed up around my ears to keep out the chill, relaxed, and I tore into a Slim Jim.

In my other hand was the phone I'd stolen, and I stared at it, fighting the sick feeling in my gut. I'd called a virtual stranger for help… because there was no one else. Maggie and Quentin had been my only friends.

If I called Lienna and asked her to help me, what would she say?

I snorted quietly. She'd probably turn me into a legless poodle through the phone line out of pure rage. I'd betrayed her like the slimy crook she'd assumed I was from the very start.

Betrayed, though… that was a harsh word. Tricked, yes. Hung out to dry, sure. But betrayed? I rifled through my internal thesaurus for a better option. Before we'd almost died in Rigel's secret office, and before she'd taken me to my apartment and we'd watched a movie, and before she'd vouched for me in front of Blythe, I wouldn't have worried about the best descriptor for my actions. But now?

My stomach turned over, unhappy with the Slim Jim. Or maybe that squirmy feeling was guilt.

I didn't feel guilty for saving my own ass, though. Ditching unpleasant situations and vanishing into the night was my go-to survival move.

You're an orphan with no family to speak of, and the only people willing to take you in are abusive shit stains? Run away.

The foster system can't figure out what to do with you because, unbeknownst to everyone—including you—you're a freaky mythic and you weird everyone out? Run away.

The law firm you work for turns out to be run by money-grubbing conmen and collapses? Definitely run away.

Some people might call it cowardly, but I call it self-preservation. And it'd never bothered me before. Maybe I'd trampled over Lienna's burgeoning trust and small kindnesses on my way to freedom, but what else could I have done? Waited to see if the MPD would execute me?

Determinedly munching on my ill-gotten snacks, I turned my thoughts toward a topic that didn't make my gut twitch. Like Maggie's strange behavior. And Quentin's asshole behavior—not that Quentin being an asshole was a surprise.

Yeah, he'd always been self-centered, but calling me a traitor when he'd revealed my existence to the MPD? Total bullshit. If not for him, I would've caught that flight and vanished somewhere in the South Pacific long before the MPD learned about "that intern guy who never shuts up about movies."

The behavior of Quentin's new "baby" was way weirder. Greed-condemning, paranoid Maggie was aiding and abetting a fugitive? Helping with his Blue-Smoke-related plans? Endangering herself for profit?

All wrong.

While it was totally Quentin's MO to manipulate people, he had a particular type when it came to women, and Maggie was about ten years too old and five hundred percent too quirky for him. Obviously, he was using his empath abilities to make her think she loved him. I mean, even I'd felt like snuggling up on his lap, and last I checked, I didn't bat for that team. His gooey love waves had caught me when I got too close.

I slumped back against the glass wall. Quentin would only be influencing Maggie if he needed something from her, and the only thing he desired right now was Blue Smoke. Rigel had wanted Maggie's help to break into Cerberus. If Quentin had taken over the heist plan, he must want her help too. And unlike Rigel, he wasn't giving Maggie the option to refuse.

Though Quentin was manipulating her on a level that surpassed "mean" and delved straight to "traumatizing evil," there was nothing I could do about it. I was no match for Quentin, and even if I were, I had no idea where he'd taken Maggie or how to find them or… anything. Besides, I had my own survival to worry about.

Despite that, a new dollop of cold guilt joined the weight that had settled deep in my gut.

I finished a bag of candy, threw it in the garbage can next to the bus stop, and dropped back onto the bench. Exhaustion filtered through me—mental and physical. Redecorating the café for Maggie while altering the necklace for Lienna, then all sorts of Split Kit shenanigans during my escape… I was beat.

My eyelids were drooping when something across the street caught my attention: a person standing at the edge of the curb, watching me. Tall, lean, dressed in dark clothes. Shadows masked the details of their face.

They didn't have the stick-up-the-ass rigor of an MPD agent, but they did have the leather-clad intensity of a bounty hunter.

Lienna hadn't wasted any goddamn time, had she? The moment I'd escaped, she'd probably pushed my name, mug shot, and villainous description to every mythic guild in the city. I wondered how big a bounty Blythe had authorized. How bad did she want my handsome face back in her interrogation room?

The figure across the street stepped off the curb and walked toward me.

I sprang off the bench, accidentally dropping the stolen phone. I needed to get out of there—but I didn't know what I was dealing with. A sorcerer? A telekinetic? A mage? I had to find out.

Time for my third, and arguably coolest, hallucination power: Creature Feature. I didn't get to use this one often because it lacked the subtlety of Split Kit and the Redecorator. Surprisingly, terrifying people wasn't that useful in day-to-day life.

I imagined a big-ass monster truck with blinding headlights and screaming wheels. Then I projected the image of that truck, blasting down the road, onto the person approaching me.

In theory, a roaring monster truck about to flatten you into the pavement should garner a reaction: you jump out of the way, or reveal your magic to deflect the truck, or scream and leave a new brown stain in your underpants.

In reality, the approaching mythic gave a slight flinch, then kept walking.

What. The. Shit.

Okay, well, time to run for it. I turned on my heel and bolted—and the bounty hunter sprinted after me, angling to cut me off.

Excellent. They were fearless and they had the reaction time of a genetically mutated ninja cat.

My survival drive fueled my legs, and I kicked it up another notch, running so fast the rain didn't seem to touch me. Unfortunately, the ninja cat was also pretty damn quick.

"Kit!" they yelled. "Stop!"

Oh yeah, sure. Just because you asked so nicely.

As I dashed down the sidewalk, I concentrated. Split Kit veered left across the road—and I, now invisible to my pursuer, careened to the right.

The bounty hunter took the bait. Praise be to Ralph Ellison. Slowing to a jog as I ascended a grassy hill toward a set of warehouses, I sent fake-Kit into the trees on the road's other side. Ninja-cat zoomed after him in hot pursuit—then threw on the brakes.

They skidded to a halt. Paused. Then whipped around and ran back across the road—right toward me. How? I was invisible!

"Stop, Kit!" they called. "I'm not gonna hurt you!"

Like I was going to take their word for it.

Up ahead, a seven-foot fence made of corrugated metal panels ran alongside the closest warehouse. Rousing all the adrenaline and athleticism I had within me, I leaped at the fence, grabbed the top edge, and pulled myself over with relative dexterity.

The second I hit the ground on the other side, I took off in between the building and the fence. At the first intersection of buildings, I wheeled left. Then right. Right again, then left. Even if the bounty hunter could see through my hallucinations, they couldn't see through walls. Unless they were a telethesian, in which case I was screwed. I tried not to think about that.

I whipped around another corner and came face to face with a locked gate. Breathing hard, I scrambled over it with significantly less nimbleness and landed on the other side.

And there they were: the ninja cat, waiting for me.

As it turned out, the bounty hunter was a leather-clad woman in her twenties with short blond hair shaved on the sides and the air of a gangster who could barehandedly rip my head from my shoulders. In her knee-high boots, she was nearly the same height as me.

She raised her hands as though approaching a wild animal in a trap.

Geez. Lienna must have put some nasty-sounding shit on the MPD's online bounty board: "Unarmed and extremely annoying. His hallucinations are worse than his bite. Deal with him like you would a feral kitten."

The bounty hunter opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn't all that interested in a chat, so I split myself once more, sending fake-Kit to the right while invisi-Kit dove to the left.

Before I could take a full step, she snapped her leg out. The kick slammed into my gut, throwing me off balance, and unable to stop my momentum, I pitched sideways.

I didn't even see what stupid warehouse junk I fell into, but my head cracked against something wretchedly hard and my vision went black.