by Z. J. Cannon
No one in the room looked happy about the interruption. The female FBI agent spoke first. “And who might you be?”
“Claudia DeWitt,” she said briskly, holding out a business card to the agent who had spoken. “I represent the interests of a Mr. Charles Engstrom. He has directed me to come here and take custody of your prisoner at once.”
For a few seconds, no one spoke. Everyone needed time to figure out how to react, it seemed. Everyone but me. Engstrom. The other man behind Arkanica. The one not even Skye had been able to track down. I studied DeWitt, searching for clues, but found nothing but a poised and professional human woman.
Bad enough that the FBI wanted me, along with half the countries of the world. Arkanica knew I hadn’t done any of the things I had been accused of—they had manufactured the accusations themselves—but they had plenty of reason to want me for themselves, from the destruction of their headquarters to the fact that my blood held the secret to human immortality. If they had sent someone for me, it was—
It was good.
I had spent months fruitlessly trying to track down Engstrom. This woman worked for him. If she walked out of here with me, I would be that much closer to finding him. And my gut told me I didn’t need Ellison if I had Engstrom. The man wouldn’t have worked so hard to keep himself hidden if he didn’t have a lot to hide.
Although it was moot, because it wasn’t as if the FBI was going to hand me over to a private citizen. The female FBI agent was glowering at DeWitt as if the force of her glare could push the woman straight back out the door. The man, meanwhile, looked like he was waiting for someone to let him in on the joke. “And this Engstrom works for…” He raised his eyebrows a little higher, inviting her to finish the sentence.
She didn’t take him up on the invitation. “My employer’s business concerns are none of yours,” she said coolly.
The woman’s glower intensified. “Just what we needed. Another complication. As if half the countries on earth aren’t going to be beating our door down as soon as the sun comes up.” She crossed her arms. “What are we talking here? CIA?”
“As I said,” DeWitt responded, with a slight edge to her voice, “that is none of your concern. All you need to do is hand the prisoner over to me, and I’ll take care of the rest. My employer has already drawn up the necessary paperwork.” She tapped her briefcase.
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t brighten the FBI agents’ expressions in the slightest. “If you seriously think we’re going to—” the female agent started.
“Answer your phone,” DeWitt interrupted, nodding toward the female agent’s pocket.
The agent frowned. “My phone isn’t—” She stopped as her pocket buzzed.
She pulled out the phone, and took a few steps away to talk in a low voice. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her tone came through clearly enough. The only part I did hear was an incredulous, “You have got to be kidding me.”
DeWitt gave a small smile, and said nothing.
After a moment, the agent stomped back over to us, and shoved the phone back into her pocket hard enough I was surprised she didn’t tear a seam in her pants. She murmured something in her partner’s ear.
His eyebrows reached the ceiling. He shook his head. “Our orders were clear,” he said in a low voice, but not so low that I couldn’t overhear. “Collect Thorne before anyone else gets to him. They dragged me away from my daughter’s dance recital for this. We’re not going to hand him over to some CIA spook without even—”
The female agent murmured something else.
The man’s expression darkened. “Of course she’s CIA. I don’t care if they denied it, this reeks of something classified. The United States government doesn’t just hand over valuable prisoners to anyone who walks in off the street. She works for someone, and I’m not leaving this building until we find out who, if we have to call up every three-letter agency until somebody—”
This time, it was his phone that rang. DeWitt’s smile grew a little.
He walked out of the building before he answered. But I could hear his shouting through the glass doors. Judging by the way every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on what we could see of his back, so could everyone else.
Then, abruptly, the shouting stopped.
When he walked back in, his face was pale. His eyebrows had returned to their normal position. “He goes with her,” he said, with a reluctant nod toward DeWitt. His voice was strangely subdued.
Later, I was sure—if I survived—I would look back on this and wonder what exactly the agents’ bosses had said to them. I would think about what it meant that Arkanica had regained that much power already—or had never lost it, even after what I had done to their headquarters. But right now, I didn’t have room for fear. My whole body, which had been numb and empty only moments ago, thrummed with anticipation. In a moment, I would walk out of this building in the hands of Engstrom’s representative. And then I would be that much closer to unraveling the mystery behind the man himself.
“I assume you’re going to come quietly,” DeWitt said to me, as if she couldn’t conceive of the possibility of anyone defying her. “The handcuffs, I’m afraid, will have to stay on. You understand.” She gave the cuffs a slightly longer look than was necessary. Her lips curled upward a little more. Then her eyes flicked up—to my ears, still covered by my hair.
A chill swept over me. She knew the truth, even if no one else in this building did. That only confirmed what I already knew: going with her would put me on the right track.
“So do you, it seems,” I said, giving the steel cuffs a slight rattle. I held her gaze.
She acknowledged my words with a nod, then motioned me forward. “Come with me. As I’m sure you can imagine, my employer is very eager to meet you.”
I stepped forward, half-expecting someone to stop me. Nobody did. The FBI and the Boston police all looked like they were hovering somewhere between bewildered and furious, but whatever they had heard on the phone, it was enough that no one stepped in to try to stop her.
DeWitt pushed open the door—but before she could lead me through, a man barreled in, nearly bowling her over. He stood in front of the door, panting, holding his arms out to block the doors. The newcomer was a slim Korean man in a three-piece suit, and shoes that were definitely not meant for the running he had been doing. His hair was askew; so were his glasses, which he pushed up on his nose quickly before spreading his arm out to block the doors again.
He straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. “No one is leaving here with Kieran Thorne but me. My country has reached an arrangement with yours. You are to release the prisoner into my custody immediately.”
The female FBI agent muttered something that sounded like, “One damn thing after another.” In a more normal tone of voice, she asked, “And who might you be?”
“Baek Ji-Hyun, with the National Intelligence Service, Republic of South Korea.” He fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a handful of haphazardly-folded documents, each bearing some sort of official seal. He shoved them as close to the FBI agents’ faces as he could get without moving away from the door. “If you take a look here, everything has been signed and processed by the proper authorities. Technically, you have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning to give us Thorne, but I suggest we make the transfer now, before anyone else decides to step on our toes and cause an unnecessary incident.” He gave DeWitt a pointed look.
I raised an eyebrow at the man. I wasn’t buying this for a second. First, that the United States government would hand me over so easily. Second, that they would do it after they had—apparently—already reached an agreement with Arkanica. And third, that of all the countries I was wanted in, somehow South Korea had the best claim. I couldn’t even remember what I was supposed to have done there.
Lucky for me, I had actually spent a few decades in Korea back in the 1800s. I had run into a bit of trouble in Spain, and had thought it prudent to get as far away as possible until
everyone else involved in the incident had died of old age. I hadn’t used the language in a couple of centuries, but I found I could still call it to mind. What I was curious about was whether the man in front of me could do the same. If I could expose him as not being who he said he was, I would be back on my way to Engstrom.
“What crimes does your country accuse me of?” I asked, in rusty but—I hoped—passable Korean.
The man blinked. For second, I thought it was because I had caught him in his lie. Until he came back with a rapid-fire response in something that was almost, but not quite, the language I had spoken to him. I had to think about it for a few seconds before I deciphered it as something like, “Hell if I know. Your friend Skye sent me.”
Right. Languages changed. If someone had walked up to me and started talking like they had come straight out of the 1800s, I would probably have given them the same bemused blink—even though I was old enough to remember when people had actually talked like that. But linguistic evolution wasn’t my main concern at the moment. “The plan has changed. I need to leave with this woman.” I jerked my chin toward DeWitt.
Ji-Hyun frowned at me. He rattled off something else I could barely decipher, especially with him speaking at top speed. But I got the gist—Skye had told him to come here and get me out, and not to let anyone stop him, including me. And he didn’t feel like making Skye mad today; going up against the FBI was bad enough.
“What are you two yammering about?” the male FBI agent asked suspiciously, looking between the two of us.
“It doesn’t matter,” said DeWitt, motioning Ji-Hyun impatiently aside. “My employer has already made the necessary arrangements. Thorne comes with me.”
“And who are you?” the man asked, peering skeptically at her over his glasses. “Because I haven’t heard you tell us what agency you work for.”
“As I have already explained,” said DeWitt, biting out every word, “that is not your concern. All any of you need to do is hand Thorne over, and—”
“And nothing,” the female FBI agent interrupted. She grabbed the papers out of Ji-Hyun’s hand, flipped through them, and handed them back with a nod. “Thorne goes with him.”
Everyone in the room looked at her in surprise. “You got the same phone call I did,” her partner said under his breath. “You know we can’t do that.”
“What I know is that I’m staring at what looks to me like a valid extradition order,” she said. In a lower voice—but pitched just high enough that DeWitt could hear—she added, “If we have to hand him over to someone either way, who would you rather send him with? One of our allies, or someone who won’t even tell us who she works for?”
Her partner found this tempting, I could tell. But he still looked doubtful. “We could find ourselves in hot water tomorrow morning.”
“The same goes if we piss off an ally of the United States,” she pointed out, with a nod toward Ji-Hyun. “Which is what I plan to say tomorrow to anyone who asks. And in the meantime, I’ll be able to sleep a little better at night knowing we had a reason not to give her what she wanted.”
She gave DeWitt the stink eye. DeWitt returned it with a frozen glare worthy of the Winter fae.
“We’ll want a copy of that paperwork,” said the female agent to Ji-Hyun. “Send it straight to me.” She handed him a business card, which he pocketed. Then she stepped back. “He’s all yours.”
Her partner still didn’t look at all sure about this. But after a second, and another look at DeWitt, he stepped back too.
DeWitt scowled. “You’ll be hearing from my employer within the hour.”
“By which point, the prisoner will likely be on a plane to South Korea,” said the female agent, with what I was pretty sure was the closest she ever got to a smile. “If you want him, I’d suggest hopping on a plane yourself. Hanging around here isn’t going to do you any good.”
DeWitt looked from the FBI agents to the Boston cops. “I assume you aren’t going to allow this.”
The nearest cop stepped back, hands raised. “Hey, this isn’t our fight. You can work this one out on your own.”
Ji-Hyun held the door open and motioned me forward. I shook my head. “Give them some excuse and back off,” I said in my out-of-date Korean. “Tell Skye it’s about Arkanica. She’ll understand.”
DeWitt’s eyes snapped to me at the name of the company.
Ji-Hyun answered with a shrug, and returned my head-shake with one of his own. “I’ve sunk too much into this to walk away now. I told my brother I was bringing him back something useful, and I can’t go back with a fish on my head after that.” Or something along those lines. I was starting to get the hang of his Korean, but some words still eluded me. I had my doubts about that part about the fish.
I frowned, and not because of my poor translation skills. His brother? What had Skye gotten me into?
“Besides,” Ji-Hyun added, “if anyone is getting stuck with explaining your change of plans to Skye, it’s going to be you. I’m not volunteering for that job.”
The cop nearest to me shoved me forward. “Well? You heard the man. Get out of here before any more of this shit lands on us.”
“He’s not leaving this building with anyone but me,” DeWitt insisted.
“Unless you plan on fighting me for him,” said Ji-Hyun, “I don’t think you have much of a choice but to let the two of us walk out that door. And if it does come to a fight… well, there are a lot of guns in this room, and by my count, none of them are on your side.”
He waved me toward the door again, with a touch more impatience this time.
Silently cursing Skye for a job well done, I followed Ji-Hyun out the door.
Chapter 14
Ji-Hyun’s lime-green sports car with neon purple hubcaps would have outed him as an imposter if anyone inside the police station had seen it. No one who worked for a government agency would have been caught dead driving a car as conspicuous—or maybe the more accurate word was “ridiculous”—as this. I climbed into the passenger seat, my muscles tightening as the steel closed around me. Cars were almost as bad as elevators. There was a reason I had chosen to settle down in a tourist area in Hawaii. Yes, it had been more crowded than some of the other beachfront locations I could have chosen, but tourist towns meant everything was walkable.
“Where did you learn Korean, a museum?” Ji-Hyun asked in English with a lift of his eyebrow as he merged into traffic. He was younger than I had realized—his officious act back in the police station had added years to his face. Now that he had let it drop, I would have been surprised if he was above twenty-five.
“You should have let that woman take me.” I glanced over my shoulder, but the police station had already disappeared into the distance. “She had information I needed.”
“Yeah, well, you can go ahead and explain that to Skye. And my brother. Me, I’m going to do my job. Healthier that way.” He glanced down at my handcuffs. “Sorry, I don’t have a key for those. You’re going to have to wait.”
“It’s all right.” That meant I had more time before I would need to figure out an emergency replacement for my watch. “Who exactly is this brother of yours?”
“Someone who can help you. And he will, once he gets a look at you and realizes who you are. You’ve got connections, right? Smuggling, black-market weapons… other things. My brother is going to drool when he sees you. I’m going to be his favorite little brother for the rest of my life.” He laughed and drummed out a beat on the steering wheel.
I wondered what those unspecified “other things” were that were worse than black-market weapons… and that Ji-Hyun’s brother might have a use for. “It’s a little more complicated than that.” Apparently Skye hadn’t let him in on the fact that I hadn’t actually committed most of my supposed crimes. Which meant I was guessing he didn’t know about my fae blood, either. Good. Despite the fact that I was becoming increasingly certain Skye had gotten us both in over our heads, a little of the tension went out o
f my shoulders.
“Well, I’m sure the two of you can work something out. Whatever you need, just ask. Skye told me to get you all the help you need—says you’re on some kind of important business—and my brother can do that. Oh, and don’t worry about paying him back for those fake papers. That’s on the house. By which I mean, I handled that part myself, and he doesn’t exactly know about it. So if you could keep it between us, I’d appreciate it.”
I ran through all the questions in my mind, and settled on the one that was bothering me the most. “How do you know Skye?”
“We met on the internet, of course. How else does anyone meet anyone, nowadays?” At the look in my eyes, he threw up his hands for a second, almost rear-ending the car in front of us in the process. “Hey, I didn’t mean it that way. I know how old she is, and I’m not like that. Jesus, stop staring at me like that. Has anyone ever told you those eyes of yours are terrifying?”
That was one I had never heard before. Then again, most people who made me angry had already reached the point of making me take off my watch, and they didn’t have a lot to say after that. “Answer the question.”
“She was in the market for some specialized pharmaceuticals. She was low on cash, so in exchange she offered to help me learn to ply my trade on the dark web, expand beyond the local market. I got the better end of that deal, by the way. She knows her stuff. You wouldn’t believe the kind of money I’ve been bringing in. My brother is thrilled.”
So Skye had gone from painting smiley faces on her nails to selling drugs online. Worse, apparently I had pushed her to it by asking for that knock-out drug. “Why are you still in contact?”
“She fixes the site when it breaks. And we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends, too.” He edged away from me, as much as he could in the cramped quarters of the car. “Nothing sketchy going on, I swear. She’s just fun to talk to, and she knows computers, unlike any of the bozos I hang around with at home. Besides, she keeps sending messages in the middle of the night, asking me if I need any more help with the site, stuff like that. I get the feeling she needs a friend, you know?”