Chapter 2

You might think that when a fireball comes blazing toward your skull, your life would flash before your eyes. Mine didn't. And I was super okay with that. Now wasn't the time to relive my somber existence.

An instant before the fireball incinerated my face, Lienna's voice rang out and a bright blue barrier radiated across the room. The fiery orb of death burst against it, spraying liquid flames in every direction.

Lienna clutched a wooden Rubik's Cube, which glowed with the same blue light as the barrier that had saved my ass. And my face.

Through the mangled doorway lumbered a Dwayne-Johnson-sized Neanderthal. He had to turn sideways to fit his massive shoulders—shoulders crawling with fire—through the frame. He looked less like the Human Torch and more like fiery lava was snaking down his arms. Thick liquid dripped off his fingers and hit the floor, where it ate into the dusty linoleum.

Interesting. A fire mage? That was my best guess.

He stalked into the room, accompanied by a leaping inferno and ribbons of smoking lava. Mindless fury twisted his face.

Lienna lowered her cube, and the blue wall of safety disappeared. My first reaction was that this seemed like an inherently stupid thing to do, but before I could relay my feedback, she pulled a marble from her satchel, shouted an incantation I couldn't hear over the screaming alarm, and flung it at the intruder.

The small sphere struck the man with a dull pulse. His fiery veins shrank and went out with a pitiful sizzle, then his entire body relaxed as though someone had shot him full of horse tranquilizer. He staggered back, bumped into the wall, and slid limply to the floor. Lienna retrieved a fresh pair of cuffs from her satchel and fastened them around his wrists.

The whole thing, from exploding door to unconscious mage, had taken ten seconds, adding more weight to the wilder rumors about Lienna's mastery of abjuration. The lady was good.

Without a victory dance or even a fist pump, she picked up the marble, then pulled a set of keys from her satchel, which was beginning to seem like Mary Poppins's carpetbag. Did she have a coat rack in there too?

"I've never seen a pyromage do that before," I remarked.

"Volcanomage," Lienna corrected as she jammed a key into the lock that bound my cuffs to the table and popped it open. "Follow me."

"Hold up a sec! We're not going out there, are we?"

The prospect of rushing out into whatever acrimonious chaos was ravaging the precinct didn't thrill me. If I was right about the involvement of my former pal and fellow inmate Quentin, he was flooding the entire precinct with contagious rage that would only keep building. That's what empaths did: they made people feel all the feels. In this case, all the "incoherent fury" feels.

Meaning Vesuvius the Lava Wizard was the first of many, many magical dangers outside the interrogation room.

Lienna turned toward the door. "We are."

I waved my handcuffed wrists at her back. "Can you at least unlock me first?"

"No."

Angry heat rose from my chest and into my head, but I stuffed it back down. Quentin's emotional manipulation magnified even the slightest irritation. If it was this bad here, how ragey were all the nasty criminals in lockup?

Lienna pinched one of her necklaces, a chain with a cat's eye dangling at the end. Between bleats of the relentless alarm, she declared, "Ori menti defendo."

That nonsense word was an incantation for a sorcery artifact, and in response to the trigger word, the cat's eye pendant glowed. The tension in her shoulders loosened, and as the tight lines of anger around her full lips softened, she offered me the first smile I'd seen yet. It was small and brief, but hey, it was a smile.

"Stay behind me. You'll be fine." Then she stepped out into the hallway.

To follow or not to follow, that was the question. Cowering in an unlocked room without the protection of this sorceress was far less appealing than whatever chaos awaited us, so I accompanied her out the door.

A nightmarish barrage of sounds assaulted my ears. Over the alarm, there were people screaming, footsteps pounding, metal clanging, and stuff breaking. To my right, the wide corridor ended in a set of nice, normal double doors. To my left, the hall bent around a sharp corner, beyond which was the epicenter of hell—billowing smoke, the orange glow of flames, bright flashes of magic.

Lienna strode to the left, Rubik's Cube in hand. Fighting every instinct I possessed, I crept quietly behind her. She crouched, peeked around the corner, then tucked back behind the protective wall.

"Are the soles of your shoes made of rubber?" she yelled over the alarm as she spun the Rubik's Cube, rearranging the runes that marked each square.

I looked down at the prison-issued tennis shoes I'd been handed on my arrival. "I have no idea. Why?"

A sizzling bolt of lightning leaped out of the billowing smoke and struck the fluorescent light overhead. The plastic casing shattered, raining debris on us.

"Electramage," Lienna revealed brusquely. She poked her head around the corner again. "Let's go."

"Whoa there!" I yelled like the worst cowboy of all time, desperately grabbing for her jacket. I caught the hem and yanked her back.

She shrugged me off. "What?"

"I can't go running out there like this!"

"What do you want me to do?"

My anger flared again, and I used my cuffed hands to point at her Rubik's Cube. "Share the wealth. Load me up. Magicify me!"

Another arc of lightning lit up the hallway and left a smoking hole in the wall across from us.

"At least give me something that'll protect me from Zeus!" I pointed at the cube again. "You can make different spells with that, right? It's got like forty quintillion possible combinations, so there must be one that'll make me immune to all this shit."

"Easier said than done," she snapped.

"Come on, Agent Shen. I'm defenseless here."

Jaw tight, she looked at the Rubik's Cube. "Give me a minute."

"I'm not sure we have a minute."

But she wasn't listening. She twisted and spun the cube, muttering words I could barely make out over the alarm.

"Water—where's water?" Blrrring! "Psychica…" Blrrring! "No, not elemental shiel—" Blrrring! "Where's… right!"

The deep whooshing sound of a flamethrower, accompanied by a painfully bright orange glow, cascaded down the hall. A Wilhelm scream pierced the cacophony.

Lienna spun the cube once more, then thunked it against my chest. The alarm drowned out half her shouted incantation, and a pale glow washed over the cube.

My swelling rage subsided. Calm swept over me—followed by a wave of holy shit panic as another blast of electricity assaulted the wall.

"Did it work?" she asked. "Are your emotions back to normal?"

"Uh… yeah, I think—" As her face lit up with a proud smile, disbelief scrunched my brows. "Wait, that's what your spell did? You made me immune to the empath?"

"You asked me to—"

If my hands hadn't been cuffed, I would've thrown them in the air. "What about the electricity? The hellfire? The maelstrom of death magic about to explode us into gooey mist? That's what I wanted immunity from!"

Her scowl returned. "Magic isn't that simple. At least you can think straight now. You should be thanking me."

Yeah, sure. I'd thank her if I made it through this without being skewered by lightning.

Rising to her full height and setting her feet, she faced the corridor from hell. "Just stick close to me."

With that, she leaped from behind the sheltering wall and sprinted into the melee. I took one step—then stopped. She was right. I could think straight again, and for some reason, charging after her held no appeal.

Instead, I inched to the corner and poked my head out. Two yards away, she whipped another marble artifact at a woman lit up with crackling white electricity. The electramage stumbled and fell backward, her power snuffed out—but she wasn't the only crazed mythic in the corridor.

It looked like a WWE cage match on supernatural steroids. A dozen bodies in various stages of giving or taking an ass whooping were tangled in a mass brawl. Some were criminals freed from their cells, while others were MPD agents and employees.

An alchemist and a diviner, whom I'd last seen in the holding cell beside mine, were very non-magically punching the ever-loving shit out of each other. Nearby, a short, wiry man was waving his arms and yowling incoherently—and a whirlwind was forming in the middle of the hall. Dust and debris sucked into the growing tornado, the roar of wind rising above the shrieking alarm.

Lienna gave her cube a twist and shouted another incantation. A wall of blue light swept outward, and the tornado died to nothing—but magic continued to flash and blast and flare and boom while mythics flailed and bellowed and bled.

She chucked a third marble at the aeromage and he pitched over backward. As she stooped to pick up the artifact, an angered-up MPD agent with a goatee kicked her in the side, sending her, her marble, and her Rubik's Cube sprawling.

I leaned farther into the hall. Was I supposed to do something here? Run into the chaos with my cuffed hands and bellow creative but totally pointless threats at Lienna's assailants?

The agent went for another kick, but Lienna rolled out of the way, sweeping his other leg out from under him, then elbowed him across the jaw when he hit the ground. She didn't just kick magical ass; she kicked literal ass too. And she looked good doing it.

Well then! It sure seemed like Agent Shen had things perfectly under control, so my services were definitely not required. I couldn't help anyway—not with her fancy-dancy anti-magic cuffs around my wrists.

I waited a few seconds more for her to reclaim her wooden spell cube before sliding back into the safe stretch of corridor. I awkwardly dusted off my jumpsuit, even more awkwardly ran a cuffed hand through my short brown hair, then strode away from the brawl.

Looking back on my life—which I'd spent, more often than not, on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks—I hadn't developed a soft spot for law enforcement. As a general rule, people who became cops, detectives, and agents were also the types who delighted in wielding their power like a goddamn sledgehammer. And I didn't enjoy taking the hits.

Not that I was fragile or anything. I wasn't a pane of glass here. More like a solid and reasonably handsome marble statue. You know, the type that would crack under a sledgehammer, but not straight-up shatter.

Anyway. The point is I don't trust cops, I don't like cops, and I'm confident those feelings are mutual. Same for MPD agents and their ilk. So, with only the mildest twinge of guilt, I waltzed toward freedom.

Okay, "waltz" isn't quite the right word. I bolted like a desperate fool. Can you blame me?

Bound wrists poised in front of me, I careened through the double doors, down another hall, and body-checked the push bar on a door conveniently marked with an exit sign and a staircase sign. Gotta love municipal safety regulations. Not even the mythic freakin' police could ignore them.

As I charged up the first flight of stairs, the alarm went silent. My ears rang with a phantom echo of the discord. Taking the steps two at a time, I considered that I was about to run into the streets wearing handcuffs and a gray jumpsuit. Problem for future me. Right now, present me's priority was getting the hell away from this place.

I reached the first landing and glimpsed an open door, a bland carpeted hallway beyond it.

In mid-step, my whole body lifted off the ground as though gravity had called it quits. I kicked like a drowning deep-sea diver, but it was no use. I was an untethered helium balloon in an empty stairwell.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Captain Blythe stepped into the open doorway, one hand stretched toward me. Her arm quivered from strain, but it didn't show on her face—surprising, since a telekinetic's mental strength was limited by their physical strength. My six-foot frame wasn't that lean, which meant Blythe was hella strong.

She jerked her arm sideways. I flew into the wall and the solid thwack shuddered through my bones. I slid down and landed on wobbly legs.

"Was that necessary?" I moaned.

Her fingers curled into a fist. My throat tightened, cutting off my air, and I clawed helplessly at my neck. Holy shit, she was Force-choking me! It would've been so cool if I hadn't been dying.

My lungs burned for air and my vision faded. Just when I thought I'd pass out, her hand relaxed. My throat opened and I gasped. Giving up on dignity, I slid down the wall and sat hard on the floor.

As I sucked in lungfuls of sweet, sweet air, Blythe strutted toward me. She crouched to meet my eyes, her pale blue gaze promising all kinds of regret for my rash escape attempt.

"You don't want me as your enemy, Morris," she said, barely louder than a whisper. "But you just can't help yourself, can you?"