“Okay, Captain, what’s our first order of business?”
I smiled. “Find out what’s going on at the SDC and figure out a way to reach Wade, if he isn’t stuck in a cell somewhere. All of the comms will be heavily monitored, so we’ll have to be sly about it.”
Finch grinned like the devil he was. “You know me. Sly is my middle name. And I might know just the person who can help us with this. But, to get to them, we’ll have to go outside, into the city.”
Well, it wasn’t as if we could hide here forever, right?
Three
Jacob
The Smiths were the best. I had really missed this, just sitting around, drinking coffee, chatting and stuff. And Mrs. Smith’s breakfasts… damn, they were good. I’d gotten so chubby last time. Her pesto sandwiches were killer.
“Is there a school at this coven you’ve been at?” Ryann asked. She looked dead tired. I probably did, too.
I took a massive bite of my sandwich. “Yeah.”
“Do you like it? I know school can be a pain sometimes, but it’s worth it in the end. I don’t really know how the system works for magicals, but presumably you can go on to study somewhere else? Is that right?”
I shrugged. “I think so. And yeah, it’s not too bad. I’ve got some friends and stuff, so it’s okay.”
“I bet you do.” Mrs. Smith set another sandwich down for me. She rested her hand on my shoulder for a minute, and I nearly flinched. Touchy-feely stuff wasn’t normal in the foster system. I was still getting used to it from the Rag Team, but I’d forgotten how easy it came to Mrs. Smith. She liked to fuss. And I didn’t mind her fussing. The last place I’d been at, before the Smiths’, there’d been none of this. It was dog eat dog. I was lucky to get a couple of Cheerios and a bit of spoiled milk before I got booted out to get on the bus for school.
“And what about girls, hm?” Mr. Smith smiled at me. That was taking me a while to get used to, too—people looking at me and not shouting. Isadora had been working on it with me. She called it my “recovery.” I was glad Harley had turned up and all, but the days with Isadora had been cool. I wondered what a shrink would make of that. Momma’s boy with no momma, probably. All twisted up inside, same as the rest of the kids like me.
Not Harley, though. She confused me. Like, I didn’t get how she’d come through the same system and turned out the way she had. She should’ve been totally messed up. But she wasn’t. She had her crap together, though she was always gearing up for a fight. That definitely came from the foster system. Fight or die—the foster motto.
“A few of my friends are girls,” I replied. “They’re cool.”
“Nice boy like you, I’m surprised they aren’t all swooning over you.” Mrs. Smith chuckled.
“You’re embarrassing the poor boy!” Mr. Smith put his arm around Mrs. Smith’s waist. “Take no notice of her. If you’ve got yourself a girlfriend, then good for you. You don’t have to tell us old farts about it. We probably wouldn’t have a clue how you even date these days. Tinder, is it? Or Fumble?”
I snorted into my sandwich. “It’s Bumble, I think. I don’t use those things. I’m only sixteen.”
“Fumble? My goodness!” Mrs. Smith howled with laughter. “You need to get your mind out of the gutter before you put Jacob off his breakfast.”
“At least I don’t know what it’s called. You’d be worried if I did.” Mr. Smith grinned. “See, when I met this delicious morsel, she was waiting at the bus stop on the corner of 41st Street. I was driving by in my new Mustang, and she caught my eye right away. I knew I had to speak to her, but the moment I pulled up to ask her if I could give her a ride, she hopped right onto the bus and disappeared. I kept going back to that bus stop every day, until I spotted her again. Two weeks, it was! But it was worth it. The moment I started talking to her, I knew she was the woman I was going to marry. We had our first date at the beach, and I won this little stuffed rabbit for her from a stall. We’ve still got it somewhere, don’t we?”
Mrs. Smith nodded. “It’s in our room, right by my vanity.” She smiled playfully. “Shows how much attention you pay to the things in this house. I look at it every morning and remember that day. I can still smell the buttered popcorn and the cotton candy if I think about it. And what song was playing? Do you remember?”
“‘Unchained Melody.’” He pulled her closer and started to sing it.
Ryann gave me an apologetic look. “You’ll have to excuse them. They’ve been married twenty-five years, and they’re still as sickeningly in love as the day they met.”
“I don’t mind it.” I sipped my coffee. I’d heard the story before, but it was nice to get to know the Smiths all over again. The Ryder twins had taken this from me. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. At least Mrs. Smith couldn’t remember what had happened to her. I didn’t like the idea of her having to deal with that.
“So, what can you do?” Ryann asked. “Harley and that boyband wannabe showed us what they can do. What’s your trick?”
I smirked. “Boyband wannabe?”
“I haven’t seen frosted tips since the Backstreet Boys.”
“Sorry, I don’t know who they are.”
Ryann chuckled. “Ah, the youth of today.” She took a sip of her coffee, while Mr. Smith provided the accompaniment with the rest of “Unchained Melody.” Ryann looked like she might die of embarrassment, focusing on me to distract herself. “So, do you have any skills?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I can’t exactly show them to you. I mean, you’ve already kind of seen one of them.”
“I have?”
“That portal outside… that was me. That’s what I do.” I stared into the mug. “I can sense out other magicals, too. I have an Earth ability to go with it, but it’s not very strong.”
Her jaw dropped. “You made that portal?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s insanely cool. Does that mean you can travel around wherever you want?”
I smiled. “In theory. I haven’t had much chance lately, but I’d like to.”
“Can you sense any magicalness in me?”
I put out my feelers, but nothing came back. “Afraid not. You’re totally human.”
“Ah well, can’t blame a person for being curious.” She offered me an encouraging look. “Can you do some of this Earth stuff? I’d like to see that.”
“Uh… I guess so.” Shyly, I reached out for a small herb box that sat on the breakfast bar. Putting my hands around it, I gathered Chaos into my palms. Feeding it into the soil, I watched as a thin stem spiraled up. It unfurled to reveal a violet daisy. I had to admit, it was some of my best work.
“That’s super cool.” She touched the petals, as if she didn’t believe they were real.
“Not very practical, though.” I shot her a shy grin.
She shrugged. “Not everything has to be. Plus, you can make freaking portals. I’d say that covers the practical side of things.”
“I guess so.”
As she continued to examine the flower, I tried to put myself back in this domestic picture. Could I ever come back to live here? I didn’t even know if that’d be possible. Besides, I already had a new family, in a way. I belonged with Harley, Isadora, and the others. I belonged in the magical world, not this one, as nice as it was. Plus, there were a lot of wrongs that I wanted to right. Wrongs that my parents had committed, when they’d been in the cult. I owed it to their victims to make it right. I owed it to myself, too.
We’d already come a pretty long way. Harley was getting stronger. We were getting closer to stopping Katherine each time we tried. And even though I’d messed up here and there, I’d learned a lot, too. There was a lot about Portal-Opening that I still had to discover. It was a complicated ability, and I’d just scratched the surface. Isadora could do things I couldn’t.
Yeah, I loved and missed the Smiths, but they had each other. They had their family already. I was better off with Harley and Isadora, folks who got me. Folks who und
erstood where I was coming from.
Finch and Harley walked back in, looking excited.
“Thank God we missed the singing,” Finch muttered. I shot him a dirty look. I knew Harley thought Finch was okay now, but I had to be wary.
Harley ignored him and looked at me. “Jacob, we need to go somewhere.”
“Now?”
She nodded. “Yep, pick up a sandwich to go. We’ve got places to be.”
Something was going on. Something big. Harley had that glint in her eye. She’d gotten her fighting spirit back, and I couldn’t wait to see where it was going to lead.
Four
Harley
I balled my hands into fists at my sides, keeping my Chaos ready in case we needed it. After calling Dicky—my personal cab driver—to come and pick us up, and leaving the Smiths’ house forty-five minutes ago, in pursuit of this mystery person who’d suddenly revved up Finch’s enthusiasm engine, we’d entered sketchy territory. It was a world away from the pleasant, tree-lined streets and modern houses where the Smiths lived. Finch hadn’t told us exactly where he was taking us, but I recognized the streets of Oak Park almost immediately.
Dicky’s cab had dropped us off twelve blocks ago, and we’d been walking ever since, with Finch leading the way. San Diego had been my home for as long as I could remember, and I’d seen my fair share of its shadier underbellies. I’d spent six months in a house around here when I was twelve, and that had been long enough to know this neighborhood wasn’t good news.
Then again, there were always good people, no matter where you went or where you came from. Just because a place had a bad reputation didn’t mean that the folks who lived there were bad, and I’d learned a long time ago that it didn’t serve anyone to judge a book by its cover. How Finch had come to know this place was slightly more unsettling, as I didn’t like to think about Katherine having dealings with anyone in this neighborhood—readymade followers who didn’t care about maiming or killing others, as long as it served them.
“I still don’t get why we couldn’t have just portaled to this place,” Jacob muttered, as we walked along. I could feel his anxiety, his head snapping at the slightest sound. I didn’t know a huge amount about Jacob’s foster history, but I was pretty sure he’d endured his fair share of dodgy neighborhoods, too. He had that look in his eyes—that fight-or-flight flicker.
Finch rolled his eyes. “Because you’d blab, that’s why.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“You can say that till you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the facts. When people know about things, those things stop being secret. It’s not that I want to keep this from you, since I’m actively taking you to this place, but it’s happening on my terms. I want my contact to be safe, no matter what. And that means we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.” He flashed Jacob a grin. “Besides, it’ll be good for your legs. With all that portaling, you’ll start to forget how to walk.”
“It’s not like I’d tell anyone where I’d portaled to,” Jacob said, clearly frustrated. To be honest, so was I, but if it gave us results, I’d follow Finch through every neighborhood on the West Coast.
“This way.” Finch gestured down an alleyway, which veered off from a street filled with the melted husks of burnt-out cars and the jagged scars of smashed-in windows. On the farthest corner from where we stood, a cluster of dark-clothed figures gathered in a shop doorway, the glowing ember of a cigarette flashing every couple seconds like a warning beacon. Bluish smoke coiled in the air, and sharp laughter barked across the empty street toward us. This was one of the first signs of an infected neighborhood—the snickering gangs grouping together like diseased cells, ready to spread across the streets and houses and inhabitants until they engulfed everything.
I listened for the sound of anyone following us as we made our way down the alleyway, coming out into the street on the opposite side. Here, the houses looked like hollow shells of their former glory. The paint peeled from every exterior, the windows covered in panels of cardboard and duct tape, some of the front doors riddled with bullet holes.
“You want to tell us who this person is, since we’re putting our lives on the line right now?” I whispered, as Finch got his bearings.
“She can help us. That’s all you need to know.”
“How can she help us? Who is she?” I pressed.
“She’s an old friend.”
I frowned at him. “She an old flame or something? Tell me it didn’t end badly, and things aren’t going to get thrown at your head.”
“Men and women can just be friends, you know. As far as I know, nothing will get thrown at my head, but you can never really tell with this pal of mine. She’s a law unto herself. Sucks when you don’t know everything that’s going on, doesn’t it?” He flashed me a wry smile, before unleashing a dramatic sigh. “Fine, have another tidbit if you want to ruin your appetite for mystery and wonder. She’s a rare magical. And she can help us peek inside the SDC—let us know what’s going on in there, now that we’re on the run. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.”
“I can’t promise she’ll be able to help us get in touch with Wonderboy, but she’s got some tricks up her sleeve that surpass even my devious prowess.” He grinned, clearly pleased that it was his plan that had gotten us out of our dead end. “She might be able to give us some pointers, at the very least.”
“If she’s rare, this friend of yours, how come she isn’t working for Katherine in the cult?” Jacob asked.
Finch smiled. “This might blow your mind right out of your skull, but I didn’t ship everyone I met off to Katherine’s cult. Garrett, for example.”
“Yeah, but Garrett isn’t a rare magical,” I said.
He faltered, his eyes widening. “You got me there.”
“So, why didn’t you give this rare magical up to Katherine?”
Finch shrugged. “I felt sorry for her, I guess. She’s got this sick magical mother to take care of, and a little human half-sister she’s crazy about. There’s a lot to respect about her.” He paused in thought. “I didn’t want her mom and her little sister to get lost in the healthcare and foster systems if I told Katherine.” He flashed me a look. “So, you see, I’ve had a conscience for a lot longer than you think.”
“And what’s her rare ability?” I pressed. It was crazy to think that barely a week ago the thought of Finch even having a conscience had been an abstract idea. But, now that I’d seen other sides of him, I could well believe that he’d protect someone because of his tenuous sense of morality.
“Kenzie is a Morph,” Finch replied, his tone sullen.
“A Morph?” I remembered hearing about those—rare magicals who could put their consciousness into the mind of another creature and use it in whatever way they wanted to. “I guess, if your friend can find a creature small enough, that might give us a pretty good shot at peeking inside the SDC without being detected.”
Finch nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Great minds, Sis. Great minds.”
“Yeah, I don’t buy it,” Jacob interjected.
“Don’t buy what?” I glanced at him.
“That you didn’t give this Kenzie girl up to Katherine because you ‘felt sorry for her.’ That doesn’t sound like you at all. And you were totally under Katherine’s spell before they sent you to prison. You’d have given her up. So what’s the real reason?”
I smiled at Jacob. “He’s got a point. This Finch is way different from the Finch you were before.”
Finch lifted his hand to his heart. “You wound me.”
“Spill, Finch.” I folded my arms across my chest as we came to a halt outside a gated garden that led up to a dilapidated building. The grass in the garden had grown almost as tall as my waist, interspersed with broken bottles and about a thousand rusting soda cans. A feral cat peered at us from the top of a moldy, abandoned sofa, its yellow eyes flashing as its tail lashed to and fro.
Finch shrugged. “Morphs aren’t
as rare as other rare magicals. We had other potential profiles to fill the Morph spot. So Kenzie wasn’t needed, not really. I let her slip through the cracks. I knew that, if she was taken, her mother and sister would be left alone. I really did feel sorry for her, and her family, so I kept her off the radar because I could.”
I stared at him in disbelief. We weren’t talking about more recent times here, after Adley’s death had caused his change of heart. No, this was an evil, evil time in Finch’s life. A time when he’d had no issue with leading missions that would get people killed, and he’d done whatever Katherine asked him to do, the moment she asked him to do it. The knowledge that he’d done something genuinely good, and pretty freaking empathetic, during those dark days was a total shock to the system.
“Well, well, well, looks like Jiminy Cricket was in the building long before you joined us, huh?” I nudged him in the shoulder.
“Yeah, because I was a totally soulless monster before Princess Harley came down from her shiny castle and gave me the gift of a conscience, right? You’d love it if that was true, wouldn’t you?” he retorted. “Hero complex much?”
“I mean, it’s not far off.”
Jacob chuckled. “But, if he already had a conscience, then that means you weren’t the one who brought that out of him.”
“Way to take my crown, Jake.” I offered him a playful smile, though Finch didn’t seem amused at all.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I was the one who decided to change, and it hasn’t all been halos and freaking cupcakes!” he snapped. “You’ve got no idea what I’ve given up, just so I can live with myself a bit easier. And I don’t care what anyone else says, morality is overrated. End of story.” His voice caught in his throat for a split second.
I frowned at him. “What have you given up?”
“Nothing… nothing. Forget I said anything.” He dipped his head and pushed through the rusted, overgrown gate before I could press the subject. Still, it stuck with me. I thought back to his encounter with Katherine in her office, just him and her, and wondered if something had happened in there that might explain this weird behavior. Had she made him an offer, back there, that he’d refused for our sakes?
Harley Merlin 7: Harley Merlin and the Detector Fix Page 3