by W. J. May
But she didn’t hear either Rae or James, and she had a feeling this was about something more than just a comet. But what that ‘something’ was, she hadn’t the faintest idea.
The second she fastened her shoes she grabbed her phone and headed out the same way as Devon, leaping effortlessly out the window before landing lightly upon the grass. In hindsight, she probably should have hesitated a bit for show, maybe looked around for a foothold. But she’d been sneaking out since she was about five years old, and her father was waiting impatiently on the grass.
“First rule,” he said quietly, “no phones.”
Before she could protest, he took it out of her hand and tossed it back through the open window. It landed in the center of her pillow, beeping quietly before shutting itself off.
Her mouth fell open in dismay, but closed just as quickly. Something about the look on her father’s face made her keep all objections to herself. Instead she stood there, quietly waiting for the rest. There was a black duffel bag by his feet, something she hadn’t noticed before. He picked it up without a word and started walking into the street. She stared after him, then followed.
They walked in silence for a long time, out of the residential block and past the closed store fronts that marked the entrance into the city. He didn’t look at her once, or slow his pace. The only time he even acknowledged her presence was to grab her jacket as she stepped blindly into the road.
A taxi raced out of the darkness, speeding past just inches from where she stood. Devon gave her a long look, to which she exaggeratedly looked both ways before they continued onward.
After several minutes, her legs were numb from the autumn chill and her brain was just about to burst with questions. She cast him a sideways glance, slipping into telepathy once more.
If this IS about Candyland, you’re taking it way too far.
He chuckled quietly, bringing them to a sudden stop. “We’re here.”
She tilted her head back, gazing up at the faded marquee above them. She passed this place almost every day on her way into the city, but she’d never bothered to read the sign until now.
“Gremlins Autoshop.” She flashed her father a look. “Charming.”
Instead of going to the office door, he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the metal paneling that led to the garage. It slid up a moment later, the smell of stale air wafting out.
“Come on,” he said briskly, breath clouding between them. “In you go.”
She tentatively stepped inside, peering blindly into the darkness. Her mother had a tatù that allowed for perfect night-vision, but Aria hadn’t mastered that one yet. When Devon shut the door, drenching them in total blackness, she froze still as a statue. It wasn’t until he fumbled on the wall behind them and flipped on a light switch that she came back to life.
“Okay...what the heck are we doing here?”
She watched from the door as her father strode inside as if nothing was out of the ordinary, tossing his bag to the ground and warming his hands. A second later, he punched a few buttons on the wall and an ancient heater roared to life, spraying them both with a cloud of burnt dust.
She coughed loudly, squinting at him through the fog.
“Someone was supposed to fix that,” he murmured, staring at the grate with a frown. “I can’t remember if that someone was me...”
“Dad.” She actually stomped her feet to reclaim his attention. “What is this place?”
He glanced back at her with a little smile. “This is one of our safe-houses in London.”
She froze dead still as he continued sweeping through the place, flipping on lamps and rifling through papers. As the child of a secret agent, life operated in two very distinct spheres. One was forbidden, one was not. Rarely did they intersect. Never were they open to invitation.
One foot moved after another, carrying her further inside.
“A safe-house?” she repeated, looking around with a quiet kind of awe. “Really?”
It certainly appeared as though he was telling the truth.
From the outside, the place looked like nothing more than a grimy car-shop. The kind of place that was so often deserted, you wondered how it could possibly stay in business. There was nothing of value to draw one closer. Only the smell of grease and old cigarettes wafting from inside.
Skeletal cars draped in ghostly linens hung from various suspensions all over the room. A worn ledger lay dangerously close to a puddle of oil, but none of it looked as though it had been touched in a very long time. The only parts of the room that showed any sign of life were the kitchen area and a row of lockers that her father was in the process of perusing.
Those were a little more telling.
Their parents might have been domesticated enough to raise children, but those rules obviously didn’t apply when they were on their own. Crumpled coffee cups littered the floor beside an ironically empty trashcan, familiar pieces of clothing were dangling from the cupboards, and what had started as tiny piles of clutter had expanded to take up the entire kitchen counter.
She saw a random shoe of her mother’s, a nightstick that Angel had delightedly tortured the others with after receiving it as a threat in the mail, and a stack of fashion magazines that Molly had obviously stashed after being instructed by her husband to throw them away. Perhaps the funniest thing of all was a bag of dog food left forgotten in the corner. Either Julian or Angel had apparently tried to combine spy-work with a grocery trip, but the bag had only made it halfway.
Aria walked quickly towards her father, skittering around a pair of discarded hiking boots she could have sworn she’d seen her Uncle Luke wearing on a camping trip just months before.
“Gremlins Autoshop, huh?”
He nodded swiftly, tying back his hair with a free hand.
“It was one of Gabriel’s nicknames for Angel when they were growing up.”
There was a pause.
“...gremlin?”
“Kind of makes sense, right?”
Their eyes met briefly, but she was too wound up to laugh. Instead she dug her hands into her pockets, staring around the high ceilings and echoing walls.
“So why did you bring me here?”
It should have sounded excited, but instead it ended up being rather shy. Thrilled as she was to have been given a glimpse behind the magic curtain, she couldn’t help but replay the conversation they’d had in the kitchen and be slightly embarrassed by the timing of the blessed event.
His fingers paused over a combination lock as he shot her a glance.
“When I was sixteen, my every waking second was spent obsessing over the Privy Council. I wrote weekly letters, asking to apply. Trained every night with Julian on the lawn. Spent every free minute I had standing outside the Oratory, waiting for it to open so I could see what was inside.”
He paused, considering his next words with care.
“Aria, I never want you to think that people are ignoring you or writing you off—that we disregard what you’re feeling because you happen to be young. I married Rae Kerrigan. I have nothing but the greatest respect for that power inked on your back. When I say your time will come, I’m not trying to put you off—I’m trying to inspire you. You are going to be an agent of the Privy Council. As long as that’s something you want, the decision has already been made.”
Aria held her breath, fingers curled inside her sleeves.
“But I understand that doesn’t help you now,” he concluded abruptly, giving the lock a final twirl before popping the locker open. Inside was a variety of things that had absolutely no place at a car shop. Cable ties, foreign currency, a smoke bomb... “So I decided on a little field trip.”
She watched with wide eyes as he grabbed a handful of small rectangular boxes and tossed them into the bag. Suddenly, she was very aware that he was dressed the way he always did before flying off in the dead of night. Suddenly, she was very aware that she was dressed the same way.
“What does that me
an?” she asked carefully. “A field trip to where?”
“The where isn’t important,” he replied, shutting the locker and hoisting the bag onto his shoulder. “It’s what happens when we get there that counts.”
...cryptic.
He gave her a mysterious wink before making his way across the room to a hideous picture of a leprechaun perched upon a fallen tree. Aria tilted her head, watching with increasing confusion as he slid the frame aside and punched a code into a keypad just underneath.
The door at the far end of the garage sprang open, letting in a gust of freezing air.
She followed quickly when Devon started walking towards it, shutting off the lights as he went. When they reached the door, he gestured back to the decrepit heater.
“Can you get that one?”
She glanced around, then quickly moved the switch with a telekinetic flick of her fingers. Of all the strange things that had happened (aside from the nightmare-inducing leprechaun), his casual request was probably the strangest. As a rule, Rae and Devon made it a point not to encourage the use of powers outside the safety of the school. Most supernatural parents were the same way. It was meant to drive home the message that tatùs weren’t to be taken lightly, and prevent any accidents along the way. In actuality, it was yet another well-intentioned bar in that adolescent cage.
“Okay, so you still haven’t told me,” she said slowly. “What is this field—”
She froze dead still the second she stepped into the rundown parking lot. It was impossible to say which one surprised her more: The dazzling sports car parked on one side, or the private plane parked on the other. Both were out in the open, for all the world to see. However, judging by the faint shimmer around the chain link fence, she got the feeling that they were only visible to her.
“This is incredible,” she breathed, moving onto the gravel in between them. It seemed a shame to keep such lovely things in such a rundown place. She half-expected to see broken syringes lying on the ground. “And you said this is just one safe-house in the city?”
Devon flashed a quick smile and an unspoken rule fell suddenly into place. He would tell her only the things he deemed acceptable. She would be permitted no other information than that.
Fine by me, she thought eagerly, running a hand along the edge of the plane. I still can’t believe that I’m even here. The others are never going to believe this—
“Normally I would have booked a commercial flight, but this came up last-minute and we’re running a little short on time.” Devon swung the bag over his shoulder, glancing down at his watch. “You can sit in the back if you want. Or ride up front with me.”
Aria stared blankly for a moment before gesturing across the lot.
“You mean the car?”
“I mean the plane.”
She twisted around in disbelief.
“Wait a second—you’re actually going to fly that thing? How can we possibly take off from here? Don’t we need a runway? Flight plans? We’re in the middle of the city—”
“Sweetheart,” he said gently, his face calm though his voice carried a bit of strain, “remember what I said about us being short on time? Get on the plane.”
She took a dizzied step towards it, then panicked all at once.
“Does Mom know we’re doing this?” she asked suddenly. “I’m always supposed to let her know before getting on a flight. And do I need my passport? It’s probably one of those things I should have just automatically grabbed, but I honestly thought we were going out for coffee—”
“Honey...get on the plane.”
“Right.”
A wave of nerves swept through her as she raced forward—darting up the steps with a breathless smile. Only twice before had she flown in the cockpit, and both times she couldn’t have been more than five. The light of the control panel gleamed in the moonlight as she picked up a pair of headphones from the front console and slipped them over her ears.
“This is great!” she exclaimed as Devon took a seat beside her. Judging by the way he jumped, she suspected she might be talking a little too loud. “We should do this all the time!”
He smiled indulgently, slipping the other pair over his head. “You will do this all the time. But I wanted to be here for your first one.”
She glanced over as he fired up the engine, bringing the propellers to life. “My first what?”
His eyes twinkled with a knowing smile. “Your first mission.”
Chapter 7
Aria Wardell was in supernatural heaven.
She bounced with excitement as her father steered the plane into the parking lot behind the safe-house and shot them boldly into the sky. She squeaked in delight as a muffled voice came through the headphones, requesting a mission number that her father typed routinely into the controls. She about melted down with giddiness when they landed at a private airstrip and continued onto a larger plane—only after being offered an array of beverages and weapons by a stewardess.
Then she reached emotional overload...and passed out somewhere over the Atlantic.
When she woke up a few hours later, it was still dark outside. They’d been flying west, away from the rising sun, so it was likely to be a very long night. She peered out the window at the black waves of the ocean miles below before glancing across the plane to find her father.
It was a large commercial flight, but they were the only two passengers. While she had taken up residence on the right half of the plane, he had commandeered the left. Even now, he was gazing calmly out the window—the lights of a distant city flickering occasionally across his face.
“Dad?”
He lifted his head suddenly, like she’d roused him from a deep thought. The automatic smile was soon to follow. A moment later, he was sitting by her side.
“Morning, sunshine. Have any good dreams?”
Her lips curled with a reflexive grin. He’d asked her the same question each morning since she was just a baby.
“I was being herded off the top of the astronomy tower by a pack of gremlins,” she answered with a comical frown. “Any ideas what that might mean?”
He chuckled under his breath, and stretched. “I’ve told you a thousand times—stay away from that tower. Our family doesn’t have good luck with it. I practically begged Carter not to rebuild.”
She grinned, but fell silent. It had never been made clear how the tower had come down in the first place. She knew there had been a massive fire—an enchanted fire—but the only other structural damage was on the other side of the campus, near the giant bell. How one had managed to fly into the other was a long-standing mystery, but she had no time for it now.
“So where are we going?” she asked under her breath. “I know you said it doesn’t matter, but we’re clearly flying somewhere. You ever going to tell me what this mission actually is?”
He glanced out the window at the faint glow of neon lights. “New York,” he answered simply. “We’re going to New York.”
Aria blinked in surprise, then followed his gaze. A second later, just looking wasn’t enough. She was then standing with her face pressed against the far window, trying to scan for landmarks.
Her mother had been born in England, but raised in America. As a result, she and James had spent a good deal of their childhoods visiting family on the Upper East Side. She was well familiar with the city. She even had a passable Brooklyn accent for when they snuck into clubs. But it had never once occurred to her that she might be traveling there on official Privy Council business. Let alone that the drinking age in New York was twenty-one. She was prepared, at least.
“This is really a mission, right?” she asked breathlessly as Devon came up behind her. “You aren’t just shipping me off to Great-Uncle Argyle’s until the heat on campus dies down?”
He smiled faintly in the reflection, plagued with a worry his daughter would never see. Then he tapped her shoulder and gestured to the two nearest chairs. They took a seat.
“You asked
about the mission.”
She nodded eagerly, wishing she’d brought a pen to take notes. “Is it an arms dealer? Or maybe some kind of drug kingpin? You can always use me as bait, you know. I just want to put that out there right now— ‘willing to be bait’. But honestly, I’m really thinking my first assignment should be deep undercover. Maybe I could fake a Southern accent or pretend to—”
Devon held up a patient hand, circling her back on point. “You asked about the mission?”
She took the hint and nodded silently, waiting on the edge of her seat.
“Corporate espionage.”
...what?!
It was impossible to hide her disappointment. Corporate espionage? Like people selling information to stock brokers and stuff? How was she supposed to base-jump off the Empire State Building investigating a white collar crime? It almost didn’t seem necessary.
Devon leaned back with a hidden smile. “Don’t look so excited.”
“No, I am,” she said quickly. “It’s just...I’m a little surprised. I thought we’d be—”
“Arie, what am I always telling you?”
She bit her lip, resisting the urge to slump in her chair. “Spy work is mostly boring,” she repeated automatically. “Late-night surveillance, mountains of logistics, mission reports...”
She’d heard the speech enough times to say it by heart. That being said, she’d also grown up hearing about the legendary exploits of her parents and their friends. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d recently read about them herself in the forbidden section of the library. Spy work might be ‘mostly boring’, but there wasn’t anything in the world as dangerous and fun.
“The man we’re investigating is William Morten, CEO of a major biotech firm operating on the east coast. Seven weeks ago he hired a corporate spy to infiltrate Avvon Industries, his major competitor. According to our sources the spy’s mission was to confirm the existence of a cutting edge nano-tracker, then deliver it back to Morten for mass production before Avvon could make the announcement themselves. The tracker represents hundreds of millions in potential profit. Word is that Avvon was already considering military contracts when the chip went missing.”