Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

According to Elion, Agatha wasn’t pressing charges and she hadn’t mentioned the missing invisible ring, probably because she didn’t want the SSD looking closer at her business. After accepting a drink off Tom, Elion also explained how Agatha had been distracted by preparing for a charity gala taking place tonight, raising funds for all the Lost Ones living in shanty towns. There was probably no way any money was going to reach the likes of Junk Jim living out of his van in the shadow of an underpass, it was all just marketing spin to line her silk pockets with cash.

“Agatha’s presence at the gala leaves her jewelry workshop on the East Side relatively unguarded,” Elion explained. “Should anyone want to visit it out of hours.” They sipped their bright blue cocktail. “Hm, this has quite the kick. What’s in it?”

I caught Tom’s eye and quickly shook my head. Do not mention cocaine!

“Vodka, a spritz of lemon, and my own secret ingredient that never fails to bring happy customers back for more.” He said it with such harmless glee that it couldn’t possibly be illegal.

“Hold up. Agatha has a workshop where she makes all the trinkets?” Zee leaned closer. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“So you do think?” Victor drawled.

“And not just with my dick, Fancy Fangs. If we take a little visit to Tinkerbell’s lair, we might find the pendant... make it disappear.” He swept a hand through the air. “ Poof . Buy ourselves more time to get Adam’s bead from Mr. Evil Sorcerer... said sorcerer doesn’t get to power-up. Bonus, I get to wear a hat. Win-win.”

“Why is the hat necessary?” Elion asked.

“When isn’t a hat necessary?”

“I see.” Elion glanced at Victor whose hint of a smile said go with it. “Unlike the store, Agatha’s workshop is heavily warded against intruders. However, if you were to know several gremlins, and perhaps had a way of organizing them, as vermin they might be able to slip undetected into and out of said workshop.”

“That does indeed sound like a potential plan,” Victor agreed.

Elion nodded. “I thought so.”

“We are in agreement.”

“Indeed, we are.”

Zee’s gaze ping-ponged between them. “It’s as though they’re twins. Weird, opposite, sexy twins.”

“Good, we have a plan.” I tried to smile as though everything was fine and I was definitely tough enough to go to the workshop without putting myself in danger, then caught Zee’s narrowing glare. “Zee, we’ve been through this. I’m as much at risk of dying here as I am out there.”

“Yeah.” He booped my nose. “But no.”

“I agree with Zodiac,” Victor declared, sounding final.

They were impossible when they ganged up like this. “You two never agree on anything, but on this you’re suddenly besties?”

“When it comes to your safety, yes.”

I tried catching Elion’s eye but they swiftly looked away, not wanting to be dragged into our drama. “I trust you have all you need.” They pushed from the bar and flicked up their coat collar. “I’ll also be keeping an eye on proceedings from behind the scenes. Good luck, and please refrain from mass-murder, kidnapping, or setting anything on fire.”

“That’s no fun,” Zee huffed.

“Neither is jail,” Elion called, heading out the door. “Are you aware there are some concerning noises coming from your conference room?”

“Gremlin orgy,” Zee said. “Best avoid it.”

We definitely did not need Elion stumbling upon a tied and gagged Sebastien.

“I see...” Their expression became puzzled, then a little suspicious, but they finally left, probably realizing it was better left alone.

“Wow.” With a huffing sigh, I slumped at the bar. “Elion knew about us all along?”

“It does explain how we’ve been relatively untouched by any legal repercussions. It is rare for a bounty hunter to have empathy and compassion. We are lucky indeed that they appear to be on our side.”

Lucky too that Elion didn’t take Victor’s threats seriously. “Maybe don’t threaten to torture their friends and family next time?”

“It remains an option.”

“It is good to have options,” Zee agreed.

Hm. When they agreed with each other, they were impossible to argue with.

“I’m going to see that Claymore gets comfortable,” I said. “Then we’d better get the plan ready for the workshop tonight. I’m going. No discussion.”

“Uh-huh,” Zee replied, in that wishy-washy voice that suggested he had no interest in sticking to that. Victor would though.

“If you think it best.”

It would be fine. When we worked together, we could survive almost anything. Besides, it was just going to be a little drive by a workshop. It wouldn’t be our fault if some random gremlins happened to break in and steal a few things. Gremlins were chaotic and uncontrollable... unless you knew a pixie.

After bribing Jimmy with cake, and after sunset, we pulled the Love Wagon up to the back of the hotel and loaded it with thirty-ish gremlins, which went about as smoothly as trying to shove thirty feral cats into a tiny space—but with less fur. And more hissing. Even with Jimmy riding along, controlling gremlins wasn’t going to be easy.

Zee drove, Victor rode in the front passenger seat, and I sat in the back with Jimmy on my shoulder, from where he’d occasionally snap in gremlinese to keep his flock under control.

The night sky was clear, littered with stars that got brighter the further we drove from the city center.

Seeing those stars with human eyes was a new experience. I’d only reverted to my dragon form for a few seconds before Gideon had ripped my power from me, but it had been enough to remember what it felt like to be the real me under a starlit sky. My heart was the same though. I might have been an enormous armor-scaled, fire-breathing killing machine, but my heart had always been my most vulnerable part.

Hiding had never been a long-term plan.

Nobody can hide forever. But I’d gotten so used to being Adam the human that my future had become an uncertain blur. What if, when I was dragon again, I hurt the two people I loved the most in all the worlds? What if they didn’t want me when they saw the real me?

“Are you alright?” Victor asked. He’d twisted in the front seat to peer over his shoulder. Zee hadn’t asked, but I caught his concerned glance in the rear-view mirror.

“Yeah.” I smiled, and hoped he’d believe it. “I’m fine.”

His stoic mask softened some. “You know that whatever your fears or concerns, we’re here for you, Adam. There is no force on this earth that can change that. Not even change itself.”

“I know.” Which was why the fear that I’d somehow ruin everything we had was a very real one. If we could just be a vampire, a demon, and a not-human running a hotel for supernaturals forever, that would be my dream. But with my curse broken and my glamor now temporary, when I did get my power back, change was coming.

Assuming we survived Gideon and the prophecy, would anyone want to visit a hotel where the manager might eat them? Would Zee and Victor still love me when I was a forty-five-thousand-pound mass-murdering monster? I could always shift back to being Adam, but there would be no hiding who and what I really was anymore.

Zee fiddled with the radio and found “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, and immediately began to sing. This was the first song he’d danced to in the hotel bar, and right after, we’d toasted to new beginnings. A whole lot had happened since then. We’d saved each other so many times, and in so many ways.

All of that couldn’t be for nothing, right?

Zee cruised the Love Wagon alongside the black-steel-clad, single-story warehouse, so we could get a look at its exterior before unleashing thirty gremlins through its chain-link perimeter fence. For a company that was just supposed to be making pretty jewelry, the razor wire and searchlights seemed a bit unfriendly.

“Are we all thinking the same?” Victor asked as soon as Zee pulled the van around the back of an adjacent building.

“That we should turn this puppy around, go back to the hotel, get wasted, and have sweaty, filthy, group sex with toys until breakfast?”

Jimmy—on my shoulder—stopped licking his balls and raised his hand.

“I should have expected that,” Victor sighed. “I was not thinking of sex—although now I am.”

“Hah.” Zee waggled a purple-painted fingernail in Victor’s face. “I got you thinking about dick.”

Jimmy flew off my shoulder, grabbed Zee’s finger, and licked it.

“Ew! Get him off!” Zee flapped his hand, flinging Jimmy back at me. I ducked, and Jimmy landed in a pile of gremlins, sending them bouncing off the van sides. The Love Wagon’s door burst open and the flurry of gremlins spilled out. Jimmy hovered, stuck his tiny finger up at Zee, then zipped through the air, heading toward the warehouse.

“It’s probably best, demon,” Victor began, in his scolding voice. “Not to make the pixie angry before he leads a small army of chaos gremlins in a covert mission against our enemy.”

“He licked my finger, and we all know he wasn’t thinking about fingers.”

“What could have possibly made him think about penises at a time like this?”

“It’s not my fault that pixie is sex obsessed.”

Victor’s knowing glance snagged mine, then chased after the receding flock of gremlins. “We should probably find a vantage point from which to observe their progress.”

“I got this.” Zee turned the Love Wagon around and parked it up in a lot adjacent to Agatha’s warehouse. From there, we spotted the gremlins scurrying through a hole in the fence that Jimmy must have bitten his way through. Then they dashed across a grassy area, scaled a small wall, and vanished up a drain pipe.

“Now what?” Zee asked.

“Now we wait,” I said.

“Jimmy knows what the locket looks like, right?”

“Yeah.” I’d shown Jimmy the sketches before we’d left. If everything went to plan, Jimmy would find the locket while the other gremlins caused enough chaos that Gideon and Agatha wouldn’t know their special locket was missing until we’d had enough time to plan our next move.

We played “I spy” while waiting for Jimmy to return—Victor won every time. Zee claimed he cheated, as he could see in the dark, but it was more likely that he won because Zee’s subjects were all body parts.

How long did it take a pixie and a small horde of gremlins to raid a jewelry warehouse?

We probably should have given Jimmy a time limit, not that the little pixie had a watch, or any way of telling the time.

“You don’t think they have gremlin traps, do you?” I asked, interrupting a heated discussion during which Victor was trying to explain that frogs weren’t a threat and Zee was refusing to believe him, accusing Victor of a blatant attempt to get him murdered by frogs.

They both fell silent, thinking, until Zee said, “Agent Fae would have saidif there were traps. Probably.”

“Elion may not be aware of that information either way,” Victor said. “Vermin traps wouldn’t be on any building plans.”

An uneasy feeling wriggled inside me. Had we just marched our not-so-innocent gremlins into a trap?

Victor must have seen the concerned look on my face because he replied, “Experience has taught us that gremlins are proficient at avoiding traps.”

“There’s Jimmy!” Zee said, squinting over the steering wheel. “He’s coming over.”

Sure enough, Jimmy was zipping back toward us, bobbing and weaving like a large erratic firefly, weighed down by something half his size in his tiny hands.

“What’s he got there?” Zee squinted harder.

“That’s not a pendant,” Victor said.

I looked at Victor’s face, and saw the grimace. That couldn’t be good.

Jimmy made it to Zee’s open window and flung the wrinkled, fleshy, three-inch-long appendage inside. The chubby dick-shaped item landed in Zee’s lap. Zee let out a high-pitched scream and poofed to the back of the van, blasting us all in multiple waves of purple sparks.

Victor plucked the flaccid uh... member off the seat and grimaced harder.

“Is it a dick?” Zee had plastered himself to the back of the van. “It’s a dick. He brought us a fuckin’ dick. He’s fuckin’ unhinged. I have fuckin’ trauma from Victor’s cock on a cushion and Jimmy brings us a fuckin’ severed dick?”

“Finger on a cushion,” Victor corrected, lifting the as-yet-unidentified thing. “Not my penis.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t fuckin’ know that, and I don’t know what the fuck that is. Is it a dick? Just tell me. Imma pass out.” He draped the back of his hand across his forehead. “It’s getting darker. There are drums in my ears. I can see the light.”

“Zee... It’s alright.” I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t a dick. “It is alright, isn’t it?” I asked Victor.

“It is unlikely to be alright for the previous owner of this... I suspect, finger.”

Jimmy hovered outside the window—wings buzzing, grinning. Was that blood on his chin?

“Are pixies carnivorous?” I asked.

“I would have thought that was obvious from your time in the meat freezer,” Victor replied, still eyeing the chubby severed finger.

“So wait, it’s not a dick?” Zee asked from the back.

“No.” I tossed Zee a smile. “You’d think with your vast experience with dicks, you’d know a dick from a finger.”

“Ha ha.” Zee clambered through the row of back seats and sat himself down next to me. “I have PTSD from Victor’s penis.”

“Not a sentence I’ve ever heard before,” Victor remarked.

“Yeah, we get it, you’re old.” Zee leaned forward, getting a closer look at the chonky finger. “It’s a thumb! I see it now. Okay. I’m good. Fuck. Jimmy, you freaky little pixie psycho!”

Jimmy fluttered innocent eyelashes.

“What does it mean?” Victor asked us all.

“It means someone is missing a thumb,” Zee said.

“Thank you for stating the obvious, Zodiac,” Victor drawled. “I’m uncertain I’d have guessed that without your vast intellectual input.”

Zee grinned. “You’re welcome.”

“Jimmy,” I scooted into the driver’s seat. “Thank you for the uh... thumb, but did you find the pendant we talked about?”

The little pixie shook his head.

This would have been a whole lot easier if he’d just talk, like I knew he was capable of. But he didn’t seem to want to with an audience. He pointed at the thumb Victor had pinched between his own finger and thumb, then at the warehouse.

“One of us is going to have to go in there,” Victor said. “Adam, you should stay here with Zodiac.”

“You can’t go, it’s warded.”

“What do you suggest we do? We can’t leave without our gremlins, and there’s clearly someone missing a thumb for reasons we don’t yet know. Plus, we have not secured the pendant.”

I showed Victor my hand, and the anti-ward signet ring on my index finger. “But I’ve got this.”

Victor set the severed thumb aside and leveled his gaze on me. “It makes more sense for me to wear the ring.”

“Fancy Daddy is right. He’s stronger, faster, and with that ring, their defenses won’t work on him.”

I preferred it when they didn’t get along. Rolling my eyes, I plucked off the ring and handed it over. “Zee should go with you in case there’s trouble.”

“Can’t.” Zee folded his arms. “Guarding you, Kitten.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me out here. Nobody is around. It’s the middle of the night. I’m fine. But if there are traps inside, you can help each other out. Splitting up is always a bad idea.”

“Which is why I ain’t leavin’ your side. Every time you get left behind, you get kidnapped, arrested, or some bad shit happens. Nah-uh. I’m stayin’ right here.”

I sighed. “Fine. But Jimmy, if Victor gets in trouble, you come right back and tell us.”

Little Jimmy saluted, and with Victor now wearing the ring, he opened the passenger door and hopped out.

“Fifteen minutes should be more than enough to assess the situation.” Victor hesitated, holding the door open.

“Alrighty, off you go, bye now,” Zee urged, scooting into the front of the van to take Victor’s empty seat. “Don’t die or anything. Adam will never get over it.”

“Of course,” Victor smiled, and blurred from sight.

Jimmy buzzed after him.

Zee closed the door, and wedged himself sideways on the seat so he could kick his boots up on the dashboard and wiggle into a comfy position. “Now it’s just you and me and some rando’s thumb under the stars.”

“I think Jimmy found a security guard or someone working the night shift.”

“And brutally murdered then ate them,” Zee said.

“Yeah, probably.” It seemed likely. And it wasn’t as though Little Jimmy hadn’t mass-murdered before.

“Shit happens.” Zee popped the glove compartment. “Ooh, Doritos.” He settled down again and munched on old Doritos. “We should do this more often.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“What did that Kenzo guy say? The Scooby gang? A bunch of gays who drive around solving crimes. That’s us.” He waved a Dorito around, then popped it in his mouth.

“Yeah... except we’re kinda doing the crimes right now.”

“The Scooby people do that too,” Zee said, as though it were obvious. “How else they gonna pay for gas?”

He had a point. “I looked them up. Their van is called the Mystery Machine.”

“Pfft, Love Wagon is better.” Zee stopped chewing. “Oh fuck, wait. Would ours be the Murder Machine?”

“We don’t murder that many people. Do we?”

Zee blinked, eyes widening. “Maybe we’re the opposite of the Scooby gang? Gays who go around doing crimes in their Murder Machine?”

That probably fit us more than the other version. “Accidents happen.”

“Yes they fuckin’ do.”

We both snorted laughter.

“Hold up.” Zee jolted upright, spilling the Doritos. “We got company.”

A procession of glossy black cars snaked toward the warehouse’s gated entrance.

“They look like vampire cars to you?” Zee asked.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck... We got a bunch of uninvited suckers about to join our slumber party and Fancy Fangs ain’t back yet. What we gonna do?”

Victor would probably hear any new arrivals, but we could delay them, giving him time to find that pendant. “Buy him some time.”

“Oh, babycakes, did you just say my middle name?”

“Uh... did I?” Zee had a middle name?

“I am the fuckin’ queen of distraction!” Zee reached under the van’s front seat and produced a black top hat. It resembled the top hat he’d stolen from the announcer when he’d sung “Lady Marmalade” at the Dine and Fight event. It even had the same holes punched into it for his horns. I had no idea how he’d gotten it. “Voilà! My emergency hat.”

“You have an emergency hat?”

He extended his arm, rolled the hat down his forearm, and flicked it up, catching it with a horn. “Who doesn’t?”

My lips twitched around a grin. He was such a showman. “They’ll know it’s you.”

“Kitten, everyone knows it’s me.” With a wink, he poofed outside my door and leaned in, grabbing my face in his warm hands. His big purple eyes got bigger as he pulled me close. “Just keep your cute little human ass right here. Don’t come down—for anything. I got this.”

He smacked a kiss on my lips, then poofed away, leaving me breathless.

From inside the safety of the van I didn’t see much activity, just the cars lined up to enter the gates. The low thrum of idling engines drifted on the breeze through my open window. Then a sudden flash of purple signaled Zee’s arrival. Car doors opened. Identical suit-clad vampires climbed out. There were a lot —at least twenty.

Zee seemed to be doing a lot of arm waving, pacing, wing bouncing, but I couldn’t hear what was said.

Then I remembered the other ring.

The invisibility ring.

I’d brought both rings along, just in case.

It wouldn’t hurt to pop it on and get a closer look. I wasn’t technically going down there.

I might even be able to help out. The vampires wouldn’t be able to see. Nobody had to know.

I dug out the ring, and taking a deep breath, slid it onto my finger. Nothing changed. Everything felt and looked the same. Hm... Zee had said he’d been able to see himself. Maybe I just had to trust that the ring had worked?

I hopped out of the van and made my way down the grassy bank toward the show Zee was putting on for his audience of vampires.

The warehouse’s security gate was open, waiting for them to pass through, but they were too busy staring at Zee as he strutted and ranted about the unseen danger of frogs.

With the gate wide open, and nobody having noticed me walking right up close, it seemed sensible to take the initiative and walk in.

Once through the gate, I jogged across the vacant parking lot and straight under the beady eyes of multiple cameras. Whatever wards Agatha had used, they were probably similar to the hotel wards, which stopped anyone entering who meant to cause harm or those with insidious intentions. As I wasn’t there to hurt anyone—I just wanted to take a look around and find Victor—the wards might not activate. I just had to make sure my intentions remained good.

After trying the main doors and finding them predictably locked, I hurried around the side and peeked in a window. The room inside appeared to be an office. Its lights flickered on and off erratically. A chair had been knocked over. Maybe it was always like that or... maybe the gremlins had wrecked it?

Moving along to the next row of windows, I found one had been cracked. It wouldn’t take much to pop it open. A quick elbow jab shattered the glass. I froze, letting the sound of raining shards settle to make sure no one was coming, then climbed inside.

This room was another office, like its neighbor, but here the lights were off. The ones outside in the hall flickered and buzzed ominously.

I creaked open the door and squinted into the erratic lighting.

“Victor?”

Besides the weird broken lights, nothing else seemed to be amiss—no alarms, no blood trails, no robot murder dogs. No gremlins either.

“Victor, the vampires are here,” I half whispered. Although invisible, I snuck down the hallway. It didn’t feel right to amble around a building I’d technically broken into.

Just as it seemed as though wandering around without any real sense of direction, or a plan, wasn’t going to get me anywhere, I rounded a corner and found the gremlins in the midst of a riot, much like the one they’d had in my room. Thirty gremlins suddenly looked and felt like hundreds as they ran from room to room, flung anything small enough to hold at each other and the walls, chewed cables, and generally did what gremlins did best—destroyed everything.

“You guys? I think you’ve done enough.”

They didn’t even stop to listen to my disembodied voice. Little Jimmy was the only one who could corral them, and he was probably with Victor. But where?

“Victor? Jimmy?” I called. We really needed to get this show on the road before the vampires realized Zee was wasting their time.

After maneuvering around the gremlins dashing about the hall, I rounded a corner and heard voices deeper within the building. Or more accurately, one voice—Agatha’s. She was not supposed to be here.

Oh dear.

Putting on a burst of speed, I dashed down the corridor, around the next corner, and stumbled to a stop outside closed double doors. Inside, countertops glistened with shiny vials, rows of sparkling gems, and glittering metals.

Agatha, dressed in an all-black pantsuit and wearing sweeping black eyeliner like a teen who hadn’t outgrown their emo phase, stood behind a long countertop littered with lots of tiny jewelry-making tools. Behind her, Victor appeared to be standing in her shadow, awkwardly watching on as she waved a tiny pair of pliers around, ranting about her craft and talent.

He wouldn’t just be standing there, listening to her tirade. Something was wrong... I pushed my face closer to the window, and spotted the steel pillar at Victor’s back. Was he leaning against it, or tied to it?

His hair, usually so neat and precisely controlled, had fallen loose of its braided restraints—a sure sign something was wrong. Somehow, Agatha had gotten the upper hand on him, and probably tied him to that structural pillar with reinforced bindings of some kind. Or she’d gotten the anti-ward ring off him. But it seemed unlikely he’d just hand it over...

Whatever had happened, Victor was her prisoner.

“I’m trying to save you from yourself, Victor,” Agatha explained. “As a friend. You should understand.”

“I’d prefer you save me by letting me go... as a friend.”

“If you joined us, you’d be wealthy again.” She turned to face him, still holding the small pliers. Did she mean to use them on him? “You’d have your social standing back. You’d be the glorious apex predator I know you to be, instead of this terribly pathetic shadow of your former self.”

“I’d also be as miserable as you knew me to be.”

Agatha gave the pliers a dramatic snip-snip motion.

Uh-oh. Was Victor about to lose another finger again? Or worse?

I’d told him he should take Zee. This was what happened when one of us went alone into danger. Although... he’d had Jimmy along. But Jimmy wasn’t here now. And Jimmy hadn’t always gotten along with vampires, in general.

Hm, time to intervene.

I gave the door a little shove, and popped the seal enough to glide in, still invisible thanks to the ring.

Agatha glanced over her shoulder. I froze, and held my breath. She didn’t have vampire hearing, so she wouldn’t hear my heart, but Victor would. And sure enough, his frown suggested he had.

“Huh?” Agatha squinted in my direction. “Who’s there?”

“Just the breeze,” Victor said. “You were saying how I should join you and Gideon Cain?”

“Ah yes.” Agatha faced him again. “Well, I think it’s time Mr. Vex understood who he’s dealing with, don’t you?”

“I’m sure he’s already aware.”

“No, I don’t think so.” She flitted about behind the workbench like a much larger version of a pixie, snip-snipping those jewelry pliers. “Or you wouldn’t have come here. It’s not me you should be afraid of, Victor.” Agatha stepped in close, eye to eye with Victor. “You must know Gideon Cain will turn you to dust like the aging fossil you are.”

I tiptoed toward the workbench, and spied a bunch of jug-shaped glass containers with cork stoppers in the top keeping some kind of glowing contents inside. Whatever those jugs housed, it was likely to be bad.

Sticking out a finger, I gave one of the jars a poke. It toppled over, rolled along the countertop, then dropped off the edge and smashed on the floor.

Agatha whirled. “What the—who is here?!”

Wispy blue smoke billowed in the air, expanding in rhythmic waves, like a heartbeat getting bigger and louder.

Agatha swore and strode over to the smoky mass.

I scooted around the workbench, behind Victor’s pillar and spotted the restraints—and his lack of anti-ward ring. A few splatters of blood stained his collar. Perhaps she’d used one of those smoky things to distract him? Either way, the ring would be nearby.

I tugged at the knotted ropes around his wrists, and kept an eye on Agatha. She’d reached for a clamshell case no larger than a compact mirror. But the blue smoke had grown even more, taking on a ghostly, humanoid form.

“We can’t have you escaping,” Agatha muttered. She turned, opened the clamshell case, and the blue smoke began to whoosh into it.

“The vampires are here,” I whispered into Victor’s ear. He tensed, and his fingers twitched, eager to be free, but the knots weren’t coming undone. They’d likely been warded. I’d never get them off.

I needed to find that ring.

“Agatha, you do realize Gideon Cain cannot let you live,” Victor told her. “You know too much about his illegal practices. After you’ve made the locket to harness Adam’s power, Cain will kill you with it and enslave the rest of us. You are no fool. You must see where this is going?”

“I have my insurance policies, just in case. If I die, everything I know gets sent to the media outlets. Gideon will never risk harming me. We’re partners. Like you and I could... should be.” She set the clamshell case down on the side and turned to face Victor once more. “This is your last chance, Victor. What do you say, for old times’ sake?”

I scooted around. Passing by the end of the workbench, I knocked another smoky jar over.

Agatha dashed to catch it.

With her distracted, I scanned the scattering of gems on the countertop—bits of metal and tools strewn all over. There among the bits of wire and tools, lay a simple gold signet ring with Gideon’s initials stamped into it.

Agatha caught the jar and whirled. “What is going on?! Who’s here?! Come out!”

I grabbed the ring, forgetting she’d be able to see it even if she couldn’t see me. Her stare shot straight to the anti-ward ring, floating in the air in my invisible hand.

She tensed, then spotted me. “Adam Vex!”

The anti-ward ring had interfered with my invisibility. I lunged for Victor. All I had to do was get the anti-ward ring on his finger and he’d be able to snap those ropes.

Glass smashed.

Agatha screamed, “How dare you!”

Something small and sharp punched my chest, jerking me mid-lunge. That was fine. Whatever it was, it probably wouldn’t kill me, and I was almost at Victor.

“Kill him!” Agatha ordered, and up rose the smoky figures.

Oh dear.