by Sarah Fine
The Amber was a classic cheap motel, with a little parking lot surrounded by a U-shaped building with two floors of walk-up rooms. All the doors were painted a cheerful shade of teal that didn’t quite make up for the dingy feel of the place, but I was still grateful when the drowsy manager who smelled like mothballs and gin handed me a key.
After a laborious climb to the second floor, I found my sanctuary for the night. Lugging my bag inside, I closed the door to my room and leaned on it, nearly sinking to the floor with exhaustion.
Moaning as the pain radiated over my shoulder and across my back, I crawled to the bed and under the covers, pulling them up to my chin. And then I let out a wheezy laugh.
This was not how I’d expected to spend my evening. Somehow, over the course of the last few hours, my life, the one I’d chosen, the one I’d committed to, had completely fallen apart. The man I loved, the one I had planned to pledge my life to in a matter of weeks, had deceived me in ways that I hadn’t begun to process and killed my grandpa with his stupid greed. I had no idea where Ben was or if he was still looking for me. I had no idea who he was talking to or what he’d told them. I turned the diamond of my engagement ring inward and clenched my fist, letting it dig into my flesh, but nothing could match the pain of Ben’s betrayal.
I was alone. Asa was unreachable. He might be in Tokyo or Sydney or Rio for all I knew.
Or, a worse thought, he was close but didn’t think I was worth the trouble. Daria had seemed confident, but Asa hadn’t told her what had happened between us, and I had no real idea how he felt about it. We’d only known each other for a few weeks of his crazy, adrenaline-fueled life. Had he thought about me at all since we’d parted? Had I mattered to him once he’d had a few months to think about it? Or had he decided I was that simple, narrow-minded, small-town girl he’d accused me of being when we first met?
Who could blame him, since that’s exactly what I turned out to be?
I reached over and pulled the burner phone out of the bag. Fighting tears, I clutched it to my chest. Every part of me hurt now, and exhaustion was like a vise, holding me to the bed.
At the thought, I shifted restlessly, hating the memories of straps and dead weight and the look on Ben’s face as he decided to force the original Sensilo magic into my body. I wrapped my arms around myself, hoping I was strong enough to hold it in. If I wasn’t, if the magic leaked out of my little magical reliquary vault, would it drive me insane? Would it break me like it had broken Debbie?
The throbbing in my head kept time with my weary heartbeat, lulling me into a state of half sleep. All I knew was that the pain dulled a bit. I drifted, stabbed occasionally back to consciousness, but lay suspended in time, no future, no past, no present.
A digital chime jerked me out of my stupor. With shaking hands, I flipped the phone open, joy and hope hammering inside me. “Asa?”
“You have to get out of there,” Daria said in a frantic whisper. “Zhong knows you’re there!”
“What?” I flipped the covers off my legs, tensing as the pain in my chest returned.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I trusted the wrong person.” She sounded terrified.
“Are you okay?”
“I will be. Gonna go dark for a little bit. You get yourself out of there, okay? Don’t tell me where you’re going. Just go.” The line clicked. She’d ended the connection.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself up and fumbled for the light in the blackness. Daria had said they knew where I was, and I couldn’t just sit around and wait for them to find me.
I stumbled back as my door splintered and swung inward. Spinning around, I tried to crawl over the bed to get away, but someone landed on my back, crushing me to the mattress, his hand clamped over my mouth.
“You will stay quiet,” he murmured in my ear. I inhaled the scent of garlic and breath mints. “And you’ll do exactly what I tell you to. Now relax. Stop fighting.”
Mindfucker, Asa whispered in my memories. Knedas magic would normally have made me as pliable as putty, but the ever-present pain in my chest made it easy to see right through the manipulation. Still, since this Knedas was holding me down, it wasn’t going to do any good to struggle.
I forced myself to go limp, closing my eyes as a tear streaked down my cheek.
He let go of me. “Get up and turn around.” His weight lifted from my body, and I pushed myself up and turned over as he turned on the lamp. My captor was an Asian guy about my age, dressed in slacks and a neatly pressed gray button-up, his black hair slicked back from his face. And he wasn’t alone. The Ekstazo agent who’d nearly taken me out in Utah with his sex magic—a pretty boy with fabulous eyebrows and a wicked look in his dark eyes—gave me a neat little bow. “Good to see you again, Mattie. I don’t think we ever truly formally met. My name is Shan. You’ll be screaming it later.”
My stomach turned. “Your social skills could use some work, Shan.”
He chuckled as he looked at his Knedas pal, who didn’t seem even half as amused. “Adorable, isn’t she?”
Shan’s smile was bitter, and in his eyes I saw a hunger for payback. “I look forward to continuing where we left off, Mattie, but we’d better find ourselves someplace more private first. We have another transaction to complete.” He looked over his shoulder toward the splintered door. “Let’s get her to the car.”
The Knedas agent nodded. “Stand up, Mattie. Where are your shoes?”
I walked over to where I’d left my flip-flops and slid them onto my feet with a disappointed sigh. Was there some unwritten law of the universe that decreed I would never have proper shoes when I needed to run for my life?
“Mattie, you will stay next to me. You will tell anyone who asks that you’re with us and are leaving willingly. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” My whole body was screaming at me to run, but I walked slowly to the door with the Knedas in front of me and Shan behind me. As long as he didn’t touch me, I had a chance. I wiped my clammy palms on my dress as we entered the cool night air. The parking lot was not even half-full, and apart from a couple screwing loudly and enthusiastically a few doors down, no one was making much noise. I saw a few curtains twitch as we walked past on our way to the stairs and hoped someone inside might have heard them break the door and called the police, but I knew it wasn’t likely.
I had to save myself. If they got me in a car, it was all over.
I eyed the railing and the set of stairs maybe a hundred yards ahead. I had to time this just right and pray that my body wouldn’t give out right when I needed it most. It had been ages since I’d asked it to do anything remotely like this, and the pain was still crippling me.
“Mr. Zhong is very eager to meet you in person,” Shan said. “He means you no harm.”
“Uh-huh. Nothing says ‘I mean you no harm’ like kicking down a girl’s door in the middle of the night.”
“He would like to know what happened at the Waldorf,” the Knedas said. “You left quite a mess behind. Marcus could only give us a few details, but he was not very clear.”
Probably because he’d been hit in the head—twice—and then had his body used as a superhighway for one of the four most powerful pieces of magic in the entire world. “Served him right,” I muttered, bracing as I spotted my chance. “Oh, I forgot my phone in the room!”
“You won’t need it,” said Shan.
“It has some texts on it that Mr. Zhong will want to see,” I said, wishing my voice weren’t shaking.
The Knedas sighed. “Go get it, Shan. Just in case. Mattie, you will stay with me.”
“I’ll stay with you,” I said in the blank, dreamy voice I’d found myself using when actually under the influence of Knedas magic.
The Knedas nodded and stepped away from me, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Shan turned to go back to the room.
It was now or never. Death or glory.
Or possibly several broken bones and a head injury.
I dove
over the edge of the railing, drawing on sixteen years of gymnastics training. Before the Knedas could get to me, my fingers closed tight around the horizontal railing and I flipped as if I were back on the parallel bars, ending up hanging just a few feet over the roof of an SUV parked below. As the Knedas shouted and reached for my hands, I let go.
My legs gave out as I landed, my knees slamming into the roof. The car alarm began to shriek, echoing the alarms going off in my head. Move. Move. I slid over the edge of the vehicle and kicked off my flip-flops. Above me, I could hear the Knedas shouting at me to stop. I glanced over my shoulder to see Shan sprinting for the steps as the other agent climbed over the railing.
“Fire,” I screamed as I tore through the parking lot. “Fire!”
It was the only thing I could think of that might bring people out of their rooms instead of making them lock their doors. I sprinted for the street, still shouting, even as I scanned my surroundings for a place to hide. I wasn’t kidding myself. I was fast over short distances, but anything more than that and I wouldn’t make it. Already each breath was a searing pain and my feet were faltering. But as much as I was hurting, I couldn’t give up. I wasn’t about to let Shan put his stupid Ekstazo hands on me, and I was terrified of being strapped to a table while someone tried to force the Sensilo magic out of me.
Basically, I wasn’t ready to die.
So I ran. And screamed. Because I could hear Shan and his buddy behind me, and I knew they were going to catch me and punish me for escaping. “Help,” I shrieked as I scrambled across South Michigan Avenue and hit the sidewalk again, hoping the trees lining the road would obstruct the agents’ view long enough for me to duck out of sight when the opportunity arose. But the block was taken up by one long building, with no alleys or doorways in sight.
Somewhere behind me, a siren sounded, but we were in South Chicago and I was guessing that was a regular occurrence. Knowing I was risking hitting a dead end, I swung a sharp right as soon as I reached the corner of the building—and ran straight into the arms of a man lurking in the shadows.
I yelped as he swung me around and shoved me against the wall. I got my hands out just before I collided with brick, and stumbled backward, landing on my butt in the grass. Movement to my right made me scoot back as fast as I could. Not six feet away, shadowy figures were struggling in the darkness. I heard grunts and the hard slap of fists against flesh, and then saw the flash of a streetlight reflecting off metal—an extendable baton. One of the men went down. The man holding the baton staggered back and pulled something from his belt. At first I thought it was a gun, but then he fired it at his remaining opponent, and it made a crackling sound instead of a bang.
A Taser.
The man he’d aimed at fell to his knees and began scraping at his arms, his fingers clawed and desperate, and I knew whatever was affecting him wasn’t electricity. By the looks of it, those prongs had been soaked in some kind of magic, either Strikon or Sensilo. When he began to whimper, I realized it was Shan.
Which meant . . .
The winner of the fight dropped the Taser thingy and turned around, the extendable baton hanging from his other fist.
Tall and lean. Snake hips and dark hair. Crooked nose and smile like a knife.
I stared at the man I’d been trying not to think about for the past nine months. “Asa.” My voice cracked as I said his name.
Asa Ward stepped into a slant of light. “Been a while, Mattie.” His honey-brown eyes looked me up and down. He arched an eyebrow. “You look like shit.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
And just like that, I was transported back to the first night I ever laid eyes on him. I groaned. “Social skills. Get some.”
“Social skills weren’t what saved your ass from two of Zhong’s thugs,” he said, grabbing my upper arm and hoisting me up from the ground. He pulled his hand back quickly and shook it like I’d burned him. “What the fuck?”
“What’s wrong? What did you feel?”
He shook his head. “Daria said you were loaded up, but with you that shouldn’t matter.” He looked down at his hand.
Dread ran like icy water across my skin. “And?”
He wiped his palm on his pant leg. “We need to get you out of here.” He glanced over at the two incapacitated agents. Shan was still clawing at his skin like there were bugs crawling all over him, and his Knedas partner was out cold. “Come on.”
He headed for the back of the building, the pockets of his cargo pants rattling and sloshing and clanking softly with each step. I nearly asked him what he had in there, but the steely tension in Asa’s shoulders kept me quiet. The strangest feeling swirled inside me—giddiness, disappointment, wistfulness, frustration . . . my heart couldn’t decide where to land. I kept looking up at him as we passed beneath streetlamps, trying to figure it out. He’d let his dark hair grow a bit since I’d last seen him; now it curled at the nape of his neck and against his temples. It was the only soft thing about him, though. Asa was still all angles and edges. Part of me wanted to touch him, to see if he would melt a little, and the rest of me shied away, for fear he would cut me.
We ended up on a potholed access road that ran between the building and a rail yard on the other side. A black van bearing a bumper sticker that said, “Pit bulls are better than people” was parked against the fence. As we approached, I heard a very familiar bark. “Gracie,” I said with a smile.
Asa pulled out a clicker and unlocked the doors. “She hasn’t seen you in a while, so be careful—”
I slid open the passenger door. “Hey, girl,” I said, and in an instant my face was covered in sloppy pit bull kisses. I ran my hands along her silky flanks as she frantically sniffed at me, her entire butt wagging with excitement. But then my fingers flexed as a sudden pulse of searing pain made me tense up, and she whined and withdrew to the backseat. I leaned on the van to catch my breath as Asa hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Don’t have all day,” he said curtly.
I don’t know what I’d been hoping for when I imagined him coming to my aid, but this wasn’t it. Wincing as the pain sliced along my rib cage, I closed the back door and dragged myself into the passenger seat. “I’m worried about Daria.”
“She’s fine. Leaving town until this settles down, though.”
“I’ve caused her so much trouble.”
“Yeah, you did,” said Asa, so harshly it made me cringe. “What did you think would happen?”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“You just charged in like you always do, right? God forbid you stop to think.” His fingers were so tight around the steering wheel that I was surprised it didn’t crumple under the pressure.
“That’s not fair.”
“I don’t give a shit about fair. How’d you manage to hook up with Marcus? He’s a fucking bottom-feeder.”
I clung to my seat belt as he executed a sharp right. “Um,” I said in a raspy voice. “I didn’t really. Ben was the one who—”
“And there we go. Why didn’t I think of that? Let me guess—you two needed money for some sweet McMansion in suburban Cardboardville, and you had the bright idea to jump back in and score some quick cash. I’m sure Ben was fucking thrilled when you offered to be his piggy bank.” He glared at me, his lip curled into a snarl. “Is that why you look so fucking strung out? You’ve been at this for a while, am I right?”
His words, the way he was so ready to believe the worst, made a deep gash that hurt as badly as the magic inside me did. “No. You’re actually completely wrong.”
“Yeah, right. You’re pretty fucking predictable, Mattie. But I’ll give you a few extra points for having the balls to try to break into the big leagues. How in hell did you get ahold of the relic?”
Fury swelled inside me, pressing against the fragile walls of my vault. I could almost feel it cracking. So I closed my eyes and breathed, praying my body could hold out—but I didn’t have the energy to defend myself against someone so convinced I
was the villain. “It’s none of your business.”
“You made it my business about five hours ago, baby.”
“Then I’ll tell you some other time. But I can’t right now—” I gasped as Asa braked suddenly when another car cut him off, and a pulse of agony stole my breath.
His hand closed gently over my wrist. “You okay?”
I squeezed my eyes even more tightly shut, refusing to let the tears come. I hated the unexpected caress of his voice—the one I’d been dreaming about for months, the one that meant safety, the one that meant I could let go and know down to my bones that he would carry me through. Hearing it now, and knowing how Asa really felt about me . . . it was too much. I tore my arm out of his grip. “No, you jerk. It feels like this magic is going to shatter inside me at any minute, and I need it gone.”
“I can feel it,” he said quietly. “Something’s not right in there. Strikon?”
“Sensilo.”
His brow furrowed. “What?” He reached for me again, but I dodged his hand. He let out an impatient sigh. “Maybe I was just picking up the pain as part of the overall sensing magic . . . ,” he muttered, then seemed to shake himself out of his confusion. “Either way, I shouldn’t be able to feel it. Not when it’s in you. Daria said you told her it was big, but—”
“It’s an original, Asa.”
For a moment he looked like he’d been clocked with a tire iron. “That’s impossible. You do not have the original Sensilo magic inside of you.”
“I think I do,” I whispered. “I know what original magic feels like.”
“But the Sensilo relic is in Russia. Volodya—the Russian boss—has it. I’ve been doing some digging.”
“It’s a fake.”
“How the fuck do you know all this?”
I couldn’t talk about my grandpa. Even thinking about him and what Ben had done to him threatened to send me into complete emotional meltdown, something I couldn’t afford right now. “You can sense it inside me. Does that mean other magic sensors will be able to find me?”
“They’d have to be really close. I can’t feel it unless I’m touching you.”