Chapter 24

Doom.

That's what I felt.

Pure, unfiltered, one hundred percent naturally sourced, pulp-free doom. Raw, organic, free of antibiotics and pesticides. Freshly squeezed by the claw of the devil himself and served to me by the angel of death.

"It was nice knowing you," I whispered to Lienna. "I'll see you on the other side."

She rolled her eyes. "You'll be fine."

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who's gonna be executed."

"They won't execute you, Kit."

Jangling the handcuff around my left wrist, the other end locked over the rail of my hospital bed, I didn't bother explaining that she had no way of knowing what would happen at my sentencing hearing. Which, big surprise, was still on despite my recent bout of do-gooder goodness.

When I'd turned down Vera's one-way cargo-ship cruise, I'd known my chances of escaping Vancouver a second time would be slim—and those odds had plummeted to zero the moment Quentin shot me.

Arrested was better than dead, though. Mostly.

A day after the whole chaotic showdown, I'd woken to find myself in the care of an MPD healer, with a pair of anti-magic handcuffs chaining me to my bed. Stopping Quentin had not won me any leeway with the MPD judicial system.

Joy.

My healer, Dr. Farnsley, was a portly man in his sixties. He reminded me of Danny Devito but without the boisterousness. He'd already repaired the worst of the damage caused by Quentin's well-aimed bullet—which had missed my heart by an inch—but nothing could insta-fix my lungs after their gruesome blood-drenching. I'd be stuck in this bed for a while yet.

Lienna had shown up two minutes ago, sat in the chair beside my bed, and promptly informed me that my sentencing hearing was still scheduled for next Thursday—a week from now.

"Do they even care that I helped stop Quentin while simultaneously taking down a gang of illegal artifact dealers?" I demanded indignantly.

"Of course." She pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged on the chair. She opened the fat folder she'd carried in with her. "But you could've helped without escaping custody and disappearing for three days."

"Are you still mad about that?"

She shot me a look that could flay flesh from bones. "I trusted you, and you ran away."

I tossed my head in a devil-may-care way. "I'm a psycho warper; it's what we do."

"You didn't know you were a psycho warper until yesterday!"

I arched my eyebrows. Her mouth twitched with the effort not to smile, then she dropped a magnificent eye roll on me.

Recovering her composure, she shuffled through a few pages in her folder. "Now that you mention it, I believe they added ‘escaping custody' to your charges."

I swore under my breath. "So I just have to go in front of the Judiciary Council and beg for mercy, is that it?"

She pressed her lips together, all signs of humor gone.

"I'm looking at serious jail time, aren't I?" Or worse.

"It's hard to say, Kit. A lot will depend on what Captain Blythe has to say."

I swore again. "Well, do me a favor. When they throw me back in the clink, make sure I'm not cellmates with a lunatic serial killer, okay?"

"I'll see what I can do," she muttered, not sounding all that confident. I supposed that request was outside her jurisdiction as a field agent.

"What about my fellow criminals?" I asked, needing a topic change. "Did Faustus survive?"

"Alive, but we'll see what the Judiciary Council has to say about that."

Hmm. On one hand, I wasn't thrilled that Faustus Trivium was still walking this earth; I had no sympathy for that creepy hunk of shit. On the other hand, no burdens on my conscience.

"And…" I hesitated. "Quentin?"

"Dead."

No surprise there. Maggie had put triple the number of holes in him than he'd put in me.

"Anyone else?" I asked, aiming for a casual tone.

"One of Faustus's men didn't survive his wounds. The Crow and Hammer team didn't hold back—not that they could in that situation."

"How about Eggsy? The crazy bastard was right in the thick of it."

"I think they scared him into signing an NDA, but Blythe isn't happy about a human having that much knowledge."

I settled more comfortably against my pillow and closed my eyes tiredly. "If she wants to keep an eye on him, the precinct has a lovely parking garage he could guard. It was ridiculously easy to sneak in there, by the way."

Lienna snorted.

Fatigue washed over me, and I felt myself drifting. Dread over my coming judiciary hearing had settled deep in my gut, but there was nothing I could do about it. I'd known before returning that this was the most likely outcome.

But I'd stopped Quentin and saved all the people he would've hurt with that artifact. I'd saved Maggie too—or… had I?

My eyes cracked open. "What about Maggie?"

Lienna looked up from her folder. "She's in custody. I think they scheduled her hearing for the same day as yours."

"What?" I burst out, triggering a spike of pain through my ribs. "Quentin was manipulating her! They can't punish her for that!"

"She was his willing accomplice." Lienna grimaced. "Textbook empaths aren't anywhere near as powerful as Quentin, so her sentence will depend on whether the Council believes he could've manipulated her to that extreme. I submitted a witness report explaining what I saw and experienced, but…"

She trailed off with a shrug—and a faint blush.

An odd twist disturbed my gut. Had her report included how, under the influence of Quentin's power, I'd pinned her to a wall and kissed her?

I opened my mouth—then closed it firmly. There was no need to mention how a predisposition toward an emotion made Quentin's abilities work all the better. And no need to question how I'd gone from "I'm gonna stop that empath bastard!" to "I'm gonna make out with Lienna in this dark, creepy stairwell!" in a matter of seconds. And definitely no need to ask why she'd taken so damn long to stop me.

That'd just be awkward, right?

My eyes drifted closed, thoughts lingering on that ill-timed kiss, which was emblazoned very clearly in my memory. My consciousness fizzled out as exhaustion took over.

"Kit?"

A gentle hand shook my arm, and I cracked my eyes open. Lienna was leaning over my bed, her satchel hanging off her shoulder. The blinds over the window, which last I looked had been open to let the afternoon sunlight into the room, were closed and the bedside lamp was on.

I carefully pushed up on my pillow, fighting back a yawn. "I fell asleep?"

"A few hours ago, yeah."

And she'd stayed with me anyway?

Before I could follow that thought to its sappy conclusion, she dug her hand into her bag. "I have to go, but first, I need to show you something."

She slid her hand from her bag and held out a strange metallic sculpture. It was a footlong silver snake, thin-bodied with delicate scales. The metal serpent was twisted in a coil, its tiny mouth open threateningly and fangs on display.

Pushing it into my non-cuffed hand, she watched me with an unusual degree of intensity as I examined the sculpture.

"It's kind of cool," I said uncertainly, "but not really my style. What is it?"

"It's the artifact from the vault. The silver wand."

I stared at the sculpture. "This can't be the wand."

"It is. I found it behind the sofa where Quentin threw it after you… after you turned it into a snake."

"I didn't turn it into a snake. I made Quentin hallucinate that it had become a snake. It was a warp."

She shook her head, still watching me carefully. "It's a snake now. It's not even an artifact anymore. Its magic is gone."

I didn't know what to say. An uncomfortable sensation built in my chest—an unsettling blend of disbelieving excitement and bone-deep terror.

I hastily set the sculpture on my blanket-covered lap like it might burn me. "So you're saying… with nothing but the power of my brain… I transformed a wand into a snake? A real snake?"

"A metal snake. But yes."

We stared at each other.

"But Lienna…" I rubbed my face. "My powers are visions and projections—unless this is something all psycho warpers can do?"

"Not in any of the documentation I've uncovered about psycho warping. You didn't warp someone's psyche. You warped—"

"—reality," I whispered, my gaze returning to the silver snake. "I warped reality."

And while those were the three coolest words I'd ever uttered in my life, they were also terrifying. All magic had rules. What were the rules of reality warping? Because that seemed like a really freakin' important thing to know before I started turning wands into snakes. Assuming I could do it again.

Lienna plucked the silver snake off my lap and stuffed it in her satchel. "My report on the incident… it doesn't include that you turned the artifact into something else. The artifact is officially missing from the crime scene."

My mouth fell open. Strait-laced, by-the-books, all-criminals-are-bad-people Agent Shen had lied in her report?

"Why?" I asked quietly.

She tucked her satchel against her side. "I don't think anyone should know about this power, Kit. Changing reality… that's the kind of thing that draws attention."

I read between the lines: the attention I'd draw would not be the good kind.

"Got it." I managed a weak smile. "I'll just keep that tidbit to myself."

Her smile was much warmer and more confident than mine. "In the meantime, I'll do some discreet research on reality warping."

"Okay." As she stepped back from the bed, I caught her wrist. "Lienna… thanks. For everything."

Her smile widened and softened simultaneously, and in a half-decent Bogart impression, she quoted, "Here's lookin' at you, kid."

Laughing, I watched her walk to the door. The latch snicked shut, and my amusement faded as I slumped into my pillow.

My gaze drifted to the cuffs around my wrist. As much as I wanted to know more about this newfound ability, depending on how my hearing went, I might never get the chance to test it again.