Hectic (Arcane Mage Series Book 2)

by T. S. Snow

  I sighed.

  What a fucking mess.

  I’d fix it later. Right now I had work to do.

  With that in mind, I pulled up my map with the locations where the resistance’s METs had been activated, startled to realize quite a few had been activated while I had some down time.

  Dammit all to hell and back.

  Next, I pulled up an app for tracking phones and put Andres’ information, so I could keep an eye on his location while simultaneously checking if any METs were being activated on his path. If he was on Michael’s trail, and he was the mole, he’d for sure use his MET eventually, and we’d know for sure. And knowing that dumbass, he’d probably use his MET every few minutes. He was one of those mages who did nothing without magic, and who thought magic’s sole purpose was to make his life easier.

  Probably why his Divination powers were crap.

  I did find it interesting that there had been a second MET pinging at the mole’s building, the same one that had been all around town over the last two weeks. But it had been there and then gone, so we probably lost whoever was responsible for it.

  Oh well. I’d worry about that later.

  I had just pulled my phone up to try to call Blair yet again when my phone vibrated in my hand, with a text from an unknown number.

  Not suspicious at all.

  Unknown: Charisma, I don’t know if this is still your number or not, or if you’re even truly still alive, but there’s something you should know. Michael...

  What the actual fuck? I stared at my phone, hoping it’d give me some kind of answer as to who the hell was texting me, how they even knew about Michael, something we had only just found out. And most of all: how the hell did they know I was alive and get my number?

  Before I could even think about typing an answer, another text appeared.

  Unknown: Michael is going to try to kill his sister right now. In my vision, you’re the only one who could stop him. Please, I don’t know who else to turn to for help. Save her, and save him. If he does this, there will be no return. He’ll be forever changed. You have to stop him.

  Well, fuck. I was getting a request from a random seer. Someone who probably had a strong enough gift to know the Manteis, but not strong enough to be an actual direct family member. It was probably someone from the house of Divination, but I didn’t actually know anyone from Divination. They were kind of creepy. Granted, most seers didn’t actually randomly stop walking because they got a vision. The magic of Divination worked differently from most of the other branches. I didn’t know exactly what separated them, but I’d seen it all while at the Academy; some preferred the art of Tarot cards, others tea leaves, some would freeze in the middle of a sentence, their eyes would turn white and they would start convulsing while having a vision—those were the really creepy ones because you never knew when they’d drop. I’d also heard rumors some had more... unconventional means of accessing their visions, which basically meant they consumed an insane amount of alcohol or drugs or apparently had tons of sex. I was unsure whether that last tidbit of information was actually real or not.

  Regardless, each member of the Divination family, whether they were a Manteis or not, had their own special way of accessing their power, and I always tried to stay far, far away from all of them because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted someone to be able to see into my future. What if they figured out something about me I’d rather nobody know? What if they found out something really bad happened to me? What if they learned when I’d die?

  I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to escape a possibility.

  I’d much rather just live my best mailbox opossum life and worry about the consequences when they landed on my lap.

  Or, you know, when they exploded my damn apartment and made me homeless.

  Unknown: Please. He’s going to Danica Manteis’s house right now, He wants to get rid of his sisters so he can be heir; he knows he’d never win a magical duel against them, so he’ll kill them the human way and blame it on the resistance.

  I froze, the phone growing heavy in my hands at the implications of everything I was being told.

  If this was true... If the information was right, then Michael was even more of an evil idiot than I thought he was. But it also meant that he might succeed.

  I had to do something.

  I mean, yes, it could be a trap. Which meant I needed backup and a plan B, just in case, but if it was true, well.

  I did not want to be responsible for the Manteis’s heir’s death. I might not actually know her, but she seemed nice enough. You know, when she wasn’t doing the whole stopping and freezing and her eyes going white while she was having a vision thing.

  But we couldn’t all be perfect, right?

  I wanted to answer the text, ask who was on the other side, but that would be confirming my not dead status, and I wasn’t entirely sure I should be doing that.

  Scratch that, I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t meant to do that.

  Instead, I tried calling Blair again, which annoyingly went to voicemail.

  Seriously, next time I saw her I was going to tie her up and yell at her for a whole hour.

  Just how fucking long did she need to have sex with some random dude? She should’ve been back by now!

  Unless... unless something happened to her too.

  Oh shit. Not good, not good at all.

  Calm down, Charisma. One problem at a time. Focus.

  Right. Yeah.

  I turned to the app where I had been tracking Andres on my computer, checking his route. It did seem like he was heading towards the Manteis mansion, where both twins lived. But there wasn’t really a way to be sure until they stopped there. Problem was, Andres wasn’t going to go in there even after he stopped. We were just meant to be doing recon.

  I tried calling Andres anyway, just in case. Maybe he could follow Michael inside the manor to keep an eye on him, just in case. But Andres didn’t pick up his damn phone.

  Fucking dammit. Why, oh why, was everybody against me today?

  Pick up your phone, people! I wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t life or death. Literally!

  But nooooo, answering their damn phones was clearly an impossible task.

  Stupid mages.

  I called Blaze, crossing my fingers that he’d pick up, but not really holding my breath.

  Voicemail.

  What was this? Ignore Charisma day? Didn’t they know we were in the middle of a super-secret spy mission? What happened to checking in??

  Christian! Christian would answer! He should’ve been my first attempt anyway.

  Three tries later, and I’d still gotten nothing but the phone out of range message.

  What the hell was going on that even Christian was unavailable? For crying out loud. This was an emergency.

  Fuck it. I was going to take matters into my own hands. And it would be their own fault.

  I ran into my bedroom, changing into more appropriate badass spy wear—and by that I meant I changed into a clean shirt that said “Magical Engineers do it better“ and comfy sneakers.

  Grabbing my phone, I tried to call all three of them one last time before realizing it was useless. But I still needed a ride. I needed someone I could trust with the fact that I was alive, someone whose magic was strong enough to help save the Manteis heir, or, at least, stop us from getting caught into a trap.

  Someone like...

  I gulped.

  Urgh. I was going to have to call Theo.

  39

  Charisma

  Turns out, not everyone was ignoring me tonight.

  Theo had picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for my call. Or, at least, for a call. But I wasn‘t going to dwell too much on it.

  After all, what mattered was that he had been available, and that he was pulling up at the safe house‘s driveway as we spoke.

  But as Theo got out of the black SUV he was apparently driving now—and what was it with everyon
e driving SUVs lately?—I was taken aback by how much he had changed these last few days.

  He’d looked tired before, when he was in the hospital with me, but now he looked almost... sick. His red hair was a tangled mess, his face even paler than I remembered it ever being, making the bags under his eyes pop out like crazy. His clothes were rumpled as hell and he looked... defeated.

  Guilt festered inside of me like an anchor, bringing me down and making me feel sick. With everything that had happened, I‘d forgotten one very important fact: Theo still didn‘t know about his sister. Theo, who while I had been hidden in safety and seeking revenge, had been desperately searching for his missing sister. And yet, I could’ve told him the truth back at the hospital, and while the truth wouldn’t make things easier for him, it would at least bring him closure.

  I’d taken that away from him.

  I sucked.

  “Oh Theo,” I murmured, approaching him with open arms. Without asking, he walked the rest of the way to me and fell into my arms, hugging me and clinging to me like a lifeline. Like I was the one solid thing that could anchor him during this nightmarish storm.

  Little did he know, I was about to shatter his world like glass.

  I patted his back in an attempt to be soothing, but the whole time I was mentally preparing for what I needed to come now.

  He’d hate me. He’d hate me for being the one to deliver the news, for having kept it from him. For being somewhat responsible.

  And he’d be right to do so.

  Right now, our past didn’t matter, all the pain he’d caused, all the shit I’d had to go through. Because he may have been an asshole to me before, but I’d unknowingly been an asshole to him right now, and hiding the fact Annie was dead from him was a sin far worse than him having broken up and ghosted me.

  So, yeah. I deserved his rage. And it was about time I let him in on the truth.

  “Listen, Theo. There’s something you should know. But I need you to listen to me, to everything I have to say, before you react, okay? I need you to promise me, swear to me, that you’ll let me finish, and only then you’ll say something.”

  Theo pulled back from me long enough to search my face before he said. “I promise.”

  Well, that was good enough to me.

  “I don’t know how to say this in a nice way, or even how to make it less painful, so I’ll just rip the band aid off and you have to listen to everything, remember that. I know you’ll be mad, I know you’ll be upset, and heartbroken, but I need you to listen.”

  “Charisma, what is it? You’re scaring me.”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s Annie.”

  Theo held his breath as he stared at me, but I could see it on his face. He knew. He knew without me needing to say it, he knew the truth, even if not the whole truth, and his eyes were begging me to lie to him, to tell him everything was okay. To tell him Annie was alive.

  I wished with everything I had that I had better news to share with him, but life could be cruel like that.

  “Annie is dead, Theo. She was working for AMIA on a mission, she infiltrated the resistance, and... they found out. There was a mole inside of AMIA. There is a mole inside of AMIA, and somehow, they found out the information and she paid the price. I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know they would be sending her in, or else I’d have done something to stop her. She never said anything to me, probably because she knew I’d have stopped her. I wanted to tell you. The minute I found out, I wanted to tell you, but I was given orders, orders which I’m defying right now because fuck this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about her death, and I’m sorry that it took me this long to tell you, and I’m sorry that I don’t know who did it yet, but I promise you, I will find out, and when I do, they will pay.”

  Theo said nothing, he just watched me with an indecipherable expression on his face as the temperature in the room started to grow colder, as the fog started to show in the room. Jaw tight, hands fisted, he watched me as I delivered blow after blow. And as promised, he said nothing.

  I’d thought my heart had broken before, but nothing could match the pain I felt right now, for him, for us, for Annie.

  I couldn’t stop the tears from falling any more than I could stop myself from reaching out to try to soothe him.

  He stepped back from me before I could reach him, though, and my heart broke all over again.

  “Listen, I know it’s not any consolation right now, but I think I know who the mole is; in fact, it seems he’s about to go out to act on his own, against the rebellion, and kill someone else. It’s why I called you here, actually. I need your help to go and stop him. I didn’t think... I didn’t think things through. I panicked and called you because I knew I could count on you for this, but I understand if you don’t want to help me because I really don’t deserve it right now. But you could help me stop him before he kills someone else. And maybe we could get some answers from him that would help us seek revenge for Annie.”

  “Where?” One simple question, but loaded with so much pain, so much rage, so much grief.

  “The Manteis mansion. If my information is right, he’s going to try to kill Danica Manteis.”

  Theo said nothing as he walked back to his car. I watched with trepidation as he opened the door, thinking he was about to leave me to figure out a way out of this mess alone.

  “Get in,” he said, before he sat on the driver’s seat.

  I didn’t need further instructions. I rushed into the car, opened the door, slamming my elbow onto the door as I tried to climb in. I breathed through the pain, refusing to call attention to it, put my seatbelt on and waited.

  Without another word, Theo put the car in motion and drove us to the right address. I stayed silent the whole time, trying to give him the space he needed, trying to respect his pain.

  Theo sighed halfway through the drive.

  “You breathe very loudly”

  Apparently, I hadn’t done a very good job out of the whole respecting his pain thing.

  But at least I tried.

  “I’m sorry. Do you want me to just... I’ll try to be quieter,” I said at last.

  Theo let it go for a few minutes, before he spoke again, breaking the silence.

  “I knew, you know? About AMIA. Annie thought she was being so smart, so careful to keep the secret, but I knew the day she was drafted. But I thought that because she was a Soulbinder, she’d be safe. Mostly get desk work or something equally as boring, something that would make her feel like her work mattered, but at the same time that would keep her safe, away from danger. I should’ve known Annie would never have settled for something as menial as a desk job. We never spoke about it, but whenever she would go away for long periods of time I always knew, deep down, that she had been on some kind of mission. This time, when she disappeared, I searched and searched and hired as many PIs as I could because something felt different, and then your apartment exploded and I just... I don’t know. I guess I hoped one of these leads would prove me wrong and I’d find out she was alive after all. Instead, it just made everything worse and more painful. It created this false hope that kept being crushed again and again.”

  My jaw dropped.

  Theo knew? How the hell did he know?

  Even I hadn’t known about Annie and AMIA, and I was her best friend, dammit!

  Although, he was her brother and they were pretty close so I guess that explained that, but still.

  I wished I had some Necromancer powers right now just so I could bring Annie back to kick her ass some more for making stupid decisions and putting her life at risk.

  Since I had no idea what to say, I just stayed quiet and let him say his piece.

  I mean, it was the least I could do, right?

  But boy did I have questions. I just didn’t know where to begin, or where he was going with any of this.

  Theo seemed to know, though, and to understand, because he kept going, unbothered by my silence.

  “I spent some time blaming
myself for her disappearance, you know? And even you. Because I thought that maybe if I hadn’t been so obsessed with you, with trying to get back together with you, then maybe she wouldn’t have vanished. But the truth is this would have happened no matter what, and it isn’t my fault. It’s also not your fault, Char. I’m not going to blame you for her death, because you weren‘t responsible. I know Annie was your best friend. Even after... after we broke up, you were all she ever talked about. I was glad you two had each other.“

  “She was the sister I never had,“ I murmured, but Theo heard me. He always did.

  “And you were hers, which was pretty awkward for me when we were teenagers and I had a major crush on the girl my sister thought of as another sister. Good thing we didn’t let that stop us.“ His smile was weak, but it was there. A flash of the old Theo.

  “Yeah, things did get pretty confusing for a while there.”

  “Anyway, what I mean to say by this is that it’s not either of our faults, and Annie would kill us if she thought we were taking the blame for something she decided upon. The rebels did this, and I won’t rest until the people responsible are either behind bars or dead, and the whole fucking rebellion is brought to the ground. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all guilty.”

  Part of me wanted to agree with him, to chuck every single rebel into the same category and burn them all. Watch them scream and beg for mercy as they paid for all the deaths and destruction they’d caused. But I knew, deep down, that most rebels were just misguided. They wanted change, they wanted balance, they wanted to modify the status quo so everybody could have a chance at a better life, and that wasn’t wrong. The problem was that the people who truly led the rebellion didn’t want that; they were using the weaker mages as stepping stones, sacrificial scapegoats in an attempt to shake the structure of the Arcane Families. They were using death, violence, and destruction to shake the Council of Six and then take over. They didn’t want equality, they wanted to clear the path so they could rule.