by W. J. May
It was quiet. Terrifyingly quiet.
Then a pair of footsteps started heading towards her.
Whatever composure she’d managed to regain since recovering the tracker promptly abandoned her. Without even the sense to turn invisible she froze where she stood, simply waiting to see who would appear at the other end of the hall.
The footsteps sped up, then disappeared entirely. A rush of air swept towards her.
And then—
“Arie.”
She let out a scream as a hand touched her shoulder, whirling around and fighting with all her might. Her fists smashed repeatedly into her attacker. Her arms flailed when they were captured by hands much stronger than her own. She shook her head back and forth, yelling for her father—
—only to see him standing right in front of her.
“Honey, it’s me!” he gasped, pulling her into an embrace. “It’s just me—I promise.”
She took one look at him, then dissolved into tears.
“It’s okay—you’re okay,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “Just take a breath, sweetie. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise.”
She buried her face in the front of his suit, shaking with silent sobs. The adrenaline had started to fade and she was suddenly freezing. Freezing, and shaking, and unable to stop.
“I thought maybe he shot you,” she gasped, trying to catch her breath. “I thought—”
“Nobody shot me,” Devon soothed. “We just had a little disagreement over the gun.”
...a disagreement?
She tilted her head, staring at him in amazement. Only then did she realize that her brave, handsome father wasn’t even out of breath. At no point was he fazed by the spray of bullets. At no point had that ever-present composure ever left him.
...except when his daughter screamed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Uncle Julian texted there was another gun, and I—”
Devon shook his head, pushing back her tangled hair. “You have nothing to be sorry about. You did everything you were supposed to do.”
She shook her head, unable to stop the tears. “But I almost ruined the whole mission! I called you ‘Dad’—”
“You stayed where I told you. Then you kept your promise and ran. And through all that you even managed to recover the camera. Arie, you were a complete success.”
She tensed doubtfully, remembering several rather key moments that he’d generously left out, before rifling around in her pocket. “That’s not the only thing I recovered.”
Devon stared down at the tracker, his lips parting in surprise.
“You—”
“I took it off Morten. Don’t worry,” she added quickly, “I made sure they didn’t see me. I made sure they wouldn’t see anyone else either. They’re busy guarding the plants.”
Devon shook his head in confusion, then followed her gaze. When he saw the high-powered CEO shackled to a shrub he started to say something, then thought better of it.
“...nicely done.”
For the first time all night, her face warmed with the hint of a smile. She lifted her hand in a comical salute, wincing at the sudden pressure on her ribs. “All in a day’s work—”
“What was that?” Devon interrupted in concern, forgetting the tracker entirely as he stepped back to examine his daughter. “Arie, what happened to you?”
She dropped her eyes with a guilty flush. “...I got hit with a mop.”
Chapter 9
The flight back to London was a lot more subdued than the flight leaving it. Aria spent almost the entire flight nestled in her father’s arms, gazing unblinkingly out the window. Replaying every moment in her head. Again, and again, and again.
“You should really try to get some sleep,” Devon said gently, as the pink traces of dawn filtered through the window. “We’ll be landing before you know it.”
She sat there another moment, then twisted around suddenly to look him in the eye. “Why did you bring me with you?”
He glanced down quickly, surprised by her tone. “...because I knew you were ready.”
She stared another moment, then turned back to the window. “Boy, did you get that wrong.”
“Aria—”
“I ruined the whole thing! The mission was a disaster!”
“The mission was a success,” he countered firmly. “Not only did we apprehend the suspect, but thanks to you we recovered the tracker as well.”
“Like you needed me for any of that,” she muttered, glaring back tearfully. “You had everything under control until the second I screamed. It’s a miracle we made it out of there at all.”
She could only imagine how it might have gone differently if she wasn’t there. Her father would have intercepted the tracker, apprehended the thief, and escorted Morten and the tape to Avvon headquarters. No shots would have been fired. No guns would have been drawn.
Instead he spent most of the time dodging bullets while she was attacked by a local custodial service, then tied the two people they were after to a pair of potted plants. If she was actively trying to make things harder, she didn’t know how it could have gone any worse.
Devon pursed his lips thoughtfully, as if debating how much he should say. “Arie...when I said you were ready, I didn’t mean that you were ready to take on a Privy Council mission. How could you be? You haven’t had any training for that.”
She turned away from the window, staring up at him in shock. “Then why on earth did you bring me? Especially on that mission! You didn’t even know the guy’s ink—”
He let out a sudden laugh, looking down at her fondly. “Honey...I knew the guy’s ink.”
She blinked. “...you did?”
He chuckled again, resisting the urge to ruffle her hair. “You think I would take you on a mission where I didn’t know exactly what we were up against? You think I’d let you set foot in the same room as a suspect with an unknown tatù?”
When he phrased it like that...
“Then why—”
“There’s a lot more to be ready for than just having the proper training.” He turned so they were facing each other, staring deep into her eyes. “You need to be ready to take off in the middle of the night—no notice, no explanation. You need to be ready to fight back the fatigue and take in every detail of the place around you—memorizing street signs, triaging pedestrians in order of potential risk. You need to be ready to jump into a ventilation shaft without knowing exactly where you might end up on the other side. You need to be ready for the mission.”
A ringing silence fell between them, but her father wasn’t finished.
“Most of all...you need to be ready to say whether or not you really want this.”
She shook her head blankly, staring with wide eyes. “What do you mean? Of course I want this. I’ve always wanted it—”
“Dreaming about the idea of something as a child and desiring it in real life are two very different things. You needed to know what it was actually like. You needed to actually experience it before you could make an informed decision.”
She fell silent, staring down at her hands. The images hadn’t stopped looping since they left the tarmac in New York. Some of them were exciting, but some...?
“Is it always like that?” she asked quietly.
His face softened with a sad half-smile. “The adrenaline—it never goes away. But neither does the fear,” he added seriously. “It stays with you every second. The two go hand in hand.”
She considered this for a moment. “You’re not afraid. There wasn’t a single moment tonight when you looked scared.”
He laughed again, shaking his head. “Are you kidding? I’m scared all the time. A man shot at me tonight, Aria. That’s not something you can ever get used to.”
She struggled to find the words, as it wasn’t an answer she’d expected. “So...what do you do?”
He leaned forward and took her hand, sudden intensity in his voice. “You train fiercely. You prepare m
eticulously. You do anything and everything you can to mitigate the risk. And if that ever fails...you call your dad.”
Their eyes met for a fleeting moment, then she threw her arms around his neck.
“Now you know why your mother and I have been so hesitant to let you train,” he breathed, gripping the back of her head. “It isn’t because we don’t think you can do it. We know you can. It’s because we’ve been there. We’ve seen it. We’ve felt it.” He tightened his grip. “It’s because I feel like I’m having a heart attack every time I picture you in the field.”
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath for the first time in hours. “Thanks, Dad.”
He smiled sadly, planting a kiss against the side of her hair. “Why couldn’t you have wanted to be a dentist?”
She snorted with laughter. “...a dentist who fights crime, not just cavities?”
They laughed softly, leaning back in their chairs.
The sun had risen almost completely over the horizon, scattering golden rays of light through the window of the plane. The London skyline wasn’t too far off.
“You know,” she began innocently, shooting him a sideways look, “maybe I’d be less inclined to leap into formal training if I had something else to keep me occupied—”
“You’re not getting a car, Arie. You sneak out enough as it is.”
By now, there wasn’t any point denying it. But she still felt compelled to try.
“No, I don’t—”
“A sabotaged window lock? A towel shoved under your door?” He closed his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “As if my clairvoyant best friend can’t just tell me when you go.”
“Uncle Julian’s a famous liar,” she said hotly. “And that window latch broke on its own.”
They continued flying in silence—closing their eyes and dozing occasionally as the plane shot across the sea. What felt like only a few minutes later a voice crackled over the speakers, announcing that they’d reached their destination and were preparing to land.
Aria buckled her safety belt, shooting her father one final look. “Dad...thanks for taking me with you.”
He smiled without opening his eyes, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m looking at dental schools, just in case.”
THE CLOSER DEVON AND Aria got to the house, the more she became convinced of two things.
First: The decision to take her to New York had been rather last-minute.
Second: He hadn’t told Rae.
“There’s a chance she isn’t back from France,” he muttered as they glided down the familiar streets. “Or maybe she slept in...really late.”
Aria watched him with a sympathetic smile. At this point, she wasn’t going to tell him about the fifty missed calls she had on her phone. Nor would she mention the scathing voicemails that were dinging regularly on his own. In an act of supreme charity she wasn’t even going to comment on the fact that, for the last ten minutes, they’d been circling the block.
“Tell you what,” she offered diplomatically. “Why don’t we tell her I went on a walk to clear my head and you went out to find me. When you did, we got breakfast before heading home.”
Devon turned to her slowly, looking like he was on the verge of applause.
“That’s...a wonderful idea. Not that it’s all right to lie to your mother,” he added hastily, “but we should absolutely lie to her now. I wonder if...shoot! I forgot about her truth tatù.”
Ever since discovering the ability to use multiple powers at once, Rae Kerrigan had decided to keep the ink that allowed her to know when someone was lying up and running at all times. It was a source of constant dismay for both friends and family. Especially her teenage children.
“I keep telling you,” Aria muttered conspiratorially, “we really need Uncle Kraigan to come and take that one away. It only ends in tears. Usually mine.”
Devon pulled on to the street in front of the house, glancing nervously at the windows. “We don’t call your Uncle Kraigan unless the world is ending or we’re required to as a public service by the police. To be honest, I’m not entirely comfortable with you calling him your uncle.”
Aria giggled then pulled open the door, quieting abruptly when her mother stormed down the front steps. Her first instinct was to duck back into the car, but it quickly became clear that those fiery eyes were fixed solely on her father. Loyalty vanished. She took a giant step back.
“Before you even start, you should know that I already know what happened,” Rae hissed, jabbing a sparking finger into his chest. “Julian told me everything. Under great duress.”
Devon flashed a fearful glance at the cottage down the street. “What have you done to him? Is he alive?”
“This isn’t funny, Devon.” Rae had yet to acknowledge her daughter’s presence. She had yet to even notice that she was wearing only a bathrobe and mismatched socks. “I come back from a mission only to find that you’ve taken our daughter on a mission of her own. The same daughter who’s currently at the center of a murder investigation and probably shouldn’t be leaving the country.”
Devon took a tiny step back, deliberately hiding the burn on his hand. “It was perfectly safe—”
“Except that it wasn’t perfectly safe,” Rae cried. “Julian saw that, too. I was interrogating him when he had the vision and tried calling you! I watched him write that text!”
Okay, seriously...is Uncle Julian still alive?
“Devon, how could you do this! And without even talking to me!”
He lowered his voice patiently, wishing desperately they’d go inside. “Sweetheart, we’ve discussed it endlessly—we were just waiting for the right mission to come along. When it did, I seized the moment—just like you would have done yourself.”
By this point Rae had her daughter in an affectionate stranglehold, unaware that Aria’s lips were beginning to turn blue. “The man had a gun, Devon. And how could you possibly not frisk him well enough to know he had a second? And then the whole business with the janitor?!”
Devon opened his mouth then closed it suddenly, shooting Aria a curious look. “...the mop?”
She blushed furiously, averting her eyes. “Yeah...the mop.”
“Why did you take her along now?” Rae hissed under her breath, covering Aria’s ears like there was an actual chance she might not hear. “She’s in such a delicate state—”
It was at this point that Aria pulled herself free—partially because she was on the verge of asphyxiation, and partially because she couldn’t stand idly by and listen to the rest.
“Actually, I made a decision on the plane,” she announced suddenly. “I don’t want to hide out here in the city. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying at Guilder, I want to get back to school.”
Devon’s eyes glowed with pride as Rae turned to her in shock.
“Honey, are you sure? We haven’t even...we haven’t even had family time yet.”
Aria snorted with laughter as Devon deliberately avoided her eyes.
“Trust me, I’ve had just about all the family time I can handle. On that note,” she chirped as she skipped up the porch steps, “I’m heading inside to burn Candyland and all its compatriots.”
Her parents stayed on the sidewalk, staring after with a look that was rather hard to define. It wasn’t until she’d reached the door that Devon called out to her suddenly.
“Oh and Arie, for your first mission...that wasn’t so bad.”
She lifted her eyebrows skeptically and he shrugged.
“My first mission, I ended up getting handcuffed to a parking meter. I had to haul the whole thing back to Guilder—straight into Carter’s office. Not my finest hour.”
Aria laughed aloud, wiping her boots on the steps. Already, she could smell coffee brewing inside. James was awake and was bound to ask questions. Her friends would be waiting impatiently to see if she’d been able to glean any information from her parents.
Little did they know what she’d actually done last night.<
br />
She flipped open her phone to check her messages, pushing open the door with her free hand, when she turned around suddenly, staring back with a question in her eyes.
“Is that true? About the parking meter?”
Devon let out a quiet sigh, looking sixteen years old again. “Julian still swears it was the best day of his life.”
Chapter 10
Aria didn’t wait for the new day to start, nor did she accept her parents’ offer to drive her back to school. Instead, she and James took a cab to Guilder together—enduring the awkward moment when they asked the driver to simply drop them off at the side of the road.
“Are you sure?” the man asked doubtfully, staring up and down the deserted countryside. “If you kids don’t have money to pay for the whole ride, I’d still be willing to take you.”
“We’re sure, but thank you.” Aria passed up some money then stepped out of the car, throwing her arm around James’ neck. “My brother and I are bird watchers. This is a prime spot.”
“Columba palumbus,” he added brightly. “They’re everywhere this time of year.”
Both Aria and the driver gave him the same strange look, then the cab pulled off the gravel and started heading back down the road. She waited until it was no longer in sight before removing her arm, staring down at him in disbelief.
“Are you serious?”
“What?” he shot back defensively. “It’s a common wood pigeon. Honestly Aria, it’s not my fault if no one ever taught you to read.”
They crossed to opposite side of the road and walked back to the school in silence.
It was one of those deceptively warm days, considering the season. The kind with balmy golden sunlight filtering down through the towering trees. Aria tilted her head, letting it warm her face with a small smile. For a few minutes, it was easy to forget the mess that was waiting for her back on campus. For a few precious minutes, she could be alone with her thoughts.
“Why did you want to come back so soon?”