Chapter 21

"You're crazy," Vera informed me.

I had to agree.

"You sure you want to do this?"

Not at all.

"We can return to my boat."

Teeth clenched, I swung off her motorcycle. "I've got to do this. I explained why."

She pushed her helmet visor up. "You don't owe anyone anything, Kit."

From where I was standing, it felt like I owed a lot of people quite a bit. Even if I could ignore screwing over Lienna, whom I'd only known for a few days, and even if I could ignore my friendship with Maggie, who was a grown woman and technically responsible for herself, I couldn't fail Gillian. She'd sacrificed her final few years to give me a chance to become someone better than a guy who'd run away from this.

Vera scanned my face. "Well, if you make it through the next day without landing behind bars again, have Jenkins contact me. I still owe you a one-way ticket off this continent."

I nodded, even though I knew the chances of that were well below zero.

She stared into the distance, then revved the motorcycle's engine. "By the way, if you waltz your noble ass in there right now, your little agent friend is going to walk out of the elevator, spot you, and put you down with a spell in two seconds flat. Just FYI."

I stared at her. "That's my future? You saw it?"

"Just now." She arched her eyebrows, then slid her visor down. "Good luck."

With another snarl, the bike squealed away from the curb. Vera zoomed into the evening traffic, leaving me standing on the sidewalk beside the MPD precinct's shared parking garage.

Well, shit. I sure could've used more of that seer forewarning, but at least I knew what to expect in the next five minutes.

I released a halluci-bomb on every mind in my vicinity, making myself invisible to all eyes, then slunk down the ramp, past the ticket machine, and into the dim garage interior. Passing a silver BMW and a truly gorgeous Maserati—not the MPD vehicles, obviously—I ducked behind a thick pillar.

Just past the concrete support was the battle-ready fleet of the world's most secret and powerful organization: six MPD smart cars. And just past those was the door to the elevators where, according to Vera's vision, Lienna was about to appear.

Last I'd checked, it was just after eight o'clock. Counting travel time, it was probably around eight thirty. A late end to the day for a rookie agent, but Lienna was probably trying to make up lost ground after my escape.

I'd barely planned my next move before the elevator doors opened and Lienna walked out. Her satchel was hooked over her shoulder, beads clinking in her raven ponytail and an assortment of jewelry hanging around her neck—including her anti-magic cat's eye pendant, which I'd abandoned on the café table before escaping. She had to activate it for it to block my magic, and she had no reason to do that while walking out to her car.

She didn't look threatening, one arm cradling a Blythe-like stack of folders while she felt around her coat pockets for car keys. Her shoulders had an exhausted, almost defeated hunch that I'd never seen before.

Ignoring a squirm of guilt, I focused on her mind. As she walked up to the driver's door of her car, I brought a vision to life.

The elevator door chimed again. Blythe strode out, wavy blond hair blowing back from her face and her mouth pressed thin. She strode toward the line of cars.

"Agent Shen!" she barked.

Lienna recoiled as her superior bore down on her. "Captain Blythe? I thought you'd left for the day."

Oh, oops. I'd assumed Blythe was a cyborg who didn't eat, sleep, or go home at night.

"Is something wrong?" she added.

"Obviously," Blythe growled, continuing toward the young agent. "We have a problem to discuss."

"What's that?"

Fake-Blythe said nothing. She didn't have anything to discuss with Lienna, but I did—and while my Cap-tastic projection had been delaying Lienna from getting in her car, I'd snuck up behind her, still invisible.

Letting Fake-Blythe disappear, I pulled Lienna's satchel off her shoulder and slung it away from us.

She whipped around, folders spilling to the concrete floor as her hands rose defensively. I caught her wrists and pushed her back into the car. With a twist of her arm, she freed one hand—and drove her fist into my gut.

Oof. Yeah, I deserved that.

As gently as possible, I body-checked her into the car. Catching her free arm again, I pinned her with my larger size and weight. She squirmed violently, trying to break my hold, but I had a good grip.

She stomped on my foot and when I flinched, she almost landed a headbutt.

"Lienna!" I gasped. "Just hold still for a second!"

"Let me go!" she yelled furiously. "You lying, cheating son of a—"

I mashed her harder into the car before she pushed me off balance.

"Was escaping not good enough for you?" she snarled, viciously kicking my ankles. "You came back for some revenge too?"

"No! I came back because I need your help."

"My help? What makes you think I'd ever—"

"Because if we don't stop Quentin, he's going to kill Maggie and escape with an artifact that can amplify his abilities by twenty."

She stopped struggling, and I panted from the effort of holding her—and from the throbbing bruises she'd inflicted. I should've gotten my explanation out faster.

Her chest heaved, and we both paused to catch our breath, our faces inches apart as I pinned her to the car door with my body. Fury burned in every line of her face, giving her glaring brown eyes a breathtaking intensity that was both surprisingly attractive and freakin' intimidating.

"Explain," she said flatly.

I exhaled in a rush. "Blue Smoke was a plan Rigel hatched to steal something from the security guild Cerberus. It's an artifact that can amplify psychic magic."

"An artifact?" she muttered.

"Before the heist, Rigel hired Maggie to create a hidden vault in his office where he could store the stolen artifact. That was her role in Blue Smoke."

"Wait. Does that mean the artifact is in this vault? Right now?"

"I'm ninety-nine percent sure. Maggie is the only person still alive who knows how to get into the vault, and Quentin got to her before we did. When I escaped with her"—Lienna's glare quadrupled in meanness, and I suppressed a wince—"she ran straight to Quentin. He's convinced her that they're madly in love."

Lienna's jaw clenched and unclenched as she absorbed all that. "So you found this out when you talked to Maggie, then sat on the information for three days? Why are you coming to me now?"

"I only found out about the stolen artifact early this afternoon and realized what it meant. I came to you as soon as I could. I was sort of unconscious until a couple hours ago."

"Unconscious? What happened?"

"Not important." I loosened my grip on her wrists. "Lienna, I know I was a selfish ass, but I couldn't face possible execution. I'm back now because—"

"Execution?" she interrupted disbelievingly. "You thought you might be executed? For a few counts of fraud?"

"Sixty-one charges, Lienna. Of which a large portion aren't even legit, according to you. They levied those charges to scare me. I'm betting they put me in a cell with a serial killer to scare me even more. I don't know who has it out for me or why, but if they've already filed excessive charges against me, who's to say they won't give me an excessive sentence?"

She opened her mouth but didn't seem to know what to say.

"How could I risk it?" I asked quietly. "I had no one to defend me. I was at their mercy."

She caught her lower lip in her teeth.

"I came back because Quentin is going to make Maggie open that vault, and he's going to take that artifact, and he's going to use it. And when he does, it'll make the riot he caused in the precinct look like a toddler brawl in a daycare."

She drew in a deep breath, and I pretended not to notice her chest pressing into mine.

"Okay. Okay, yes, we need to stop Quentin. Do you know where to find him?"

"The vault is in Rigel's secret Blue Smoke office, and Quentin should be there by 9:15."

Her eyes popped with alarm. "You mean tonight? Why 9:15?"

"The sun sets at 9:15, and once the night of the third crescent moon begins, he can open the vault."

"I see." She twisted her wrists. "Let me go, Kit."

I released her arms and stepped back, oddly cold now that I wasn't pressed against her warmth. Her hand dipped into her back pocket and she pulled out her phone. The screen lit up, the time stamped across it.

8:45 p.m.

We had thirty minutes to reach the vault and stop Quentin from opening it.

* * *

Any hope that we'd beaten Quentin to the fire-damaged office was extinguished the moment it came into view. Lights glowed from the hollow windows and burnt gaps in the walls.

"Shit," I muttered.

Lienna nodded tersely. The short drive hadn't been a chatty one. I'd spent most of it expanding on what I'd learned and how best to deal with Quentin. She kept gripping her cat's eye necklace as though to ensure it was still there—or maybe wishing she could activate it. I'd warned her to save the spell for when she got near Quentin.

I really wished she had a spare one for me, because I wasn't looking forward to getting within Quentin's range. I knew what he could do, and it was never a fun time.

Lienna parked in a shadowed lot half a block away, and we cautiously approached the lit-up building. Male voices rumbled from the interior, and I glanced worriedly at Lienna. Had Quentin brought backup?

Not good, because we had no backup. Another of my recommendations: Quentin's super-rage miasma made him too dangerous. With a high enough dose of hateful fury, allies could turn on one another.

We scaled the fence and crept toward the door. I peeked inside, then jerked back, mouth hanging in disbelief. Lienna leaned past me to scan the interior.

"Who are all those people?" she whispered in alarm. "You said it would be just Quentin and Maggie!"

"I… uh… I may have miscalculated."

Gulping, I peered inside again.

The burnt interior was well lit by several electric lanterns set on the floor. Shadows flickered over the charred walls as an assortment of ugly, greasy, grizzly mythics moved about with purpose.

In their center was a tall, slender, angular man with straight black hair down to his elbows.

"Keep searching," he commanded in his thin voice. "It's here somewhere."

As several grunts answered him, I retreated from the doorway and rubbed my hands over my face. Shit, shit, shit. Faustus didn't waste any freakin' time, did he? He was supposed to be having an artifact sale tonight, not following up on my tip about the Cerberus theft!

Unless he'd canceled the auction because Vera and I had stolen most of the spells he'd been planning to hock. And now he was on the hunt for the vault.

"So, um…" I flicked a glance at Lienna. "Have you ever heard of Faustus Trivium?"

She'd pulled out her phone and was typing furiously. "No?"

"He's an artifact dealer with a gang of hairy ape-minions, who I may or may not have tipped off about the Blue Smoke vault and the artifact inside it."

She looked up in disbelief. "Why would you do that?"

"I was attempting not to die. Speaking of which, Faustus really wants to kill me."

Her thumbs flew across her phone screen, then she shoved the device in her pocket and pulled out her wooden Rubik's Cube. "We need to get to that vault. It's 9:05. We only have ten minutes before Quentin can open it."

And once he had that artifact, we—and anyone else who tried to stop him—would be helpless against his magnified power. But we couldn't just charge in there. Vera and I had barely escaped Faustus and his men this afternoon. Round Two would be even worse.

Lienna twisted her cube, aligning different runes. The light leaking from the office cast harsh shadows over her terse expression. "I can't hold off that many mythics at once, and if they—"

"Oy!"

We whipped around. From the far corner of the building, a familiar mustache in a security guard uniform scurried toward us with his hand on his holster. Trevor Eggert. The old man in a young man's body who'd interrupted us the last time we'd been here.

"What do you think you're do—"

"Shh!" Lienna and I hissed vehemently.

His angry approach faltered. "It's you two again. Why—"

"Quiet!" Lienna snapped in a whisper.

"What're you doing, Eggsy?" I demanded in a low tone. "You shouldn't be here."

"I absolutely should be here," he countered, mimicking our whispers. "I'm the night guard. And badge or not, you two can't just—"

"You need to leave," Lienna ordered. "This situation is—"

"Faustus!" a voice bellowed from inside.

Eggert tried to step around me. "Who's in there?"

"Found something!" the same goon shouted eagerly.

"Found what?" Eggert muttered. "What's a faustus?"

Cursing under my breath, I elbowed him back and peeked inside again. Faustus and several of his men were clustered around the wide steel pillar that concealed the secret entrance to Rigel's underground office. They'd found the rune that unlocked the hidden door.

I whipped back to face Eggert. "Listen, Eggsy. Shit's about to get ugly. In there right now is a nasty guy with a whole bunch of other nasty guys trying to do nasty things."

"Shouldn't you stop them? And what's a faust—"

"Just stay out of the way." Unable to waste any more time on the human, I inched into the doorway. "Lienna, don't react to anything you're about to see. Things are gonna get weird."

"What do you mean?" she asked nervously.

I couldn't spare the brainpower to exclude her mind. Gathering my focus, I pictured what I wanted—then unleashed a halluci-bomb on everyone around me.

As Faustus eagerly examined the rune, the metal began to glow with nonexistent heat. I couldn't add any sensation to go with the visual, but the men recoiled anyway. The pillar glowed more and more brightly, the air rippling with heat waves that had no heat, then the whole thing melted like candle wax.

The metal slumped in a goopy, molten puddle, and Faustus stumbled backward, hands raised as though tempted to try reforming its shape.

"What happened?" he barked.

A tug on my jacket almost distracted me—Lienna was clutching the fabric as she leaned over my shoulder to peer into the room.

"Kit," she whispered faintly. "What…"

Keeping the pillar invisified—good thing I'd practiced that so much—and maintaining the vision of the molten metal, I focused on a burnt hole in the floor. Light shimmered over it, and a glowing staircase appeared, leading downward.

Faustus whirled toward the light. "There! That's it!"

The nice thing about magic: when people know it exists, they're way more prone to believing far-fetched nonsense.

As he and his men approached it, I reached back and grabbed Lienna's arm. Drawing her with me, I crept through the doorway. Eggert, thankfully, didn't try to follow us—probably too unnerved by the hallucinatory magic I was tossing around.

Faustus and his men murmured over the glowing stairway, then Creepazoid gestured imperiously. One of his cronies inched closer, peered at the imaginary staircase, then took a bold step down.

His foot passed right through the illusion and he shrieked as he fell into the unseen basement. He landed with a loud crunch.

Lienna and I darted through the shadows along the wall. As Faustus recoiled from the not-a-staircase, I made it dissolve into light, revealing a black pit in the floor. The edges crumbled inward and the hole spread into a yawning chasm of darkness.

The men scrambled backward, shouting in alarm.

"What is this?" Faustus screeched.

As Lienna and I scooted past, she reached down and flicked off a nearby lantern, deepening the shadows. I increased the speed at which the hole was crumbling, hoping the men would run for it. We reached the pillar, and Lienna blindly stretched her hands out, finding the cold metal she could no longer see.

Faustus and his men retreated, tripping and stumbling on the debris-strewn floor. Fear clung to them. They were about to break.

Then Chucky the orangutan pyromage tripped over one of his overlarge feet. He pitched backward, caught himself, and lurched forward. He staggered for balance—and stepped squarely on the dark emptiness.

And, of course, his foot landed on the non-chasm floor, because it was all a hallucination.

"What—?" Faustus gasped.

Lienna slid her hands frantically over the invisible pillar, searching for the rune. I racked my brain for a new distraction, but Faustus's head came up. He whirled around.

Our eyes met from across the room, and I braced for that whole pile of "ugly" I'd warned Eggert was coming.