But the rest of me didn’t quite believe it. I’d lived under the watchful eye of death or on the run for so long, there wasn’t anything else, not really. At that thought, something brushed the inside of my chest, just to the left of my heart.
Heartburn from the coffee, or from the attempt on our lives?
It didn’t feel like heartburn. It felt like something that didn’t belong to me, but that lived inside me. The exact sensation was difficult to put into words. My inner voice supplied a description that sent a shiver up my spine from my tailbone to the crown of my head: the brush of the Angel’s wings against the inside of my rib cage.
Which had to be bullshit. The Angel was where I’d put him last month, locked tight in a cage inside my mind. Any fluttering in my chest was flesh-and-blood fluttering, and nothing more.
Unless it wasn’t.
I couldn’t ignore the feeling, or the fear it woke in me. I’d have to do something about it. What, I didn’t know. For now, I shook off the feeling as best I could and marched for the dresser, pulling out clean panties and a bra, followed by black chinos and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Clothes that could hide blood if they needed to.
I looked up as I heard Red step into the room. His expression was careful. The lines at the corners of his eyes seemed deeper than they’d been just an hour ago.
He snicked the door shut behind him. “Tell me,” he said.
Not yet. “First you show me.”
He let me into his mind again without a word of protest. I searched for a chameleon in him, but found none. He was himself. Just Red.
Relief washed through me, then washed away. I turned my back to the dresser, shoving the drawer closed with my hip. “I’m in trouble, Red. Sunday and I think the Order were using Miguel as bait.”
He pieced it together fine. “Not to kill you,” he said. “But so you’d use your magic on him.”
I nodded.
“What do you need?” he asked.
For time to run in reverse. To be in bed with him, drowsy and coming to after a good night’s sleep. To wake to him again, with time enough to make love. To have had more hours and days and weeks before the Order came calling.
“Take care of Faith. Make sure she’s safe. Don’t get hurt.”
“I’ll do my best.” He closed the space between us. Just a handful of steps. Each one felt momentous to me, as if he was about to say or do something that would change everything.
“I checked Sunday just now, just like she asked before. I’ll check Faith when I see her. Make sure everyone is who they claim to be.” He paused. When he spoke again, I could hear his magic in his voice. “You’re not, though.”
Whatever I’d expected to hear, that wasn’t it. “I’m not a chameleon.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not. But you’re not the same Night you were before the Angel came to town. I see him inside of you.”
I held his gaze. “You haven’t told me that before. Why?”
“Wasn’t true before. I knew he was in here”—he tapped a finger on my temple—“but I didn’t see him. Now, I do.”
“Since when?” I asked.
“Since this morning. He’s stirring,” Red said. “It scares me.”
I fought the impulse to press a hand to my chest where I’d felt the feather-brush only moments ago. “Me, too.”
He framed my face with his hands. “Be careful, Night.”
I leaned into him, lifting his hands from my face, lowering them into place around my waist. I rose up on my toes and kissed him, tasting his natural sweetness and the richness of coffee and cream. His hands traveled along the curve of my back to tangle in my hair. He drew me closer. I breathed him in, as if by taking in the scent and taste of him, I could take a part of him with me.
Even pulling away, he kept his eyes locked on mine. “You call me as soon as you know something.”
“I promise,” I said.
He took a step back, freeing me to peel off my tank and jeans and dress for the mission at hand. He watched me boldly, gaze moving along the contours of my skin the whole time. As I pulled on the last item—the T-shirt—I heard his voice, muffled by the fabric.
“Is that what former assassins are wearing on the job these days?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Tension had wound my so tight inside, I needed a little release. “It’s what all the magic-users are wearing these days. Allows the fashionable magician to move seamlessly between war with the Order and dinner out with your sweetie.” I tugged the hem of the shirt into place, then combed my hair with my fingers.
“Don’t let Miguel get to you,” he said.
I sat on the bed, pulling on thick wool socks and shoving my feet into black, steel-toed boots, completing my assassin fashion. “I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”
“Not what I meant. He’s not who he used to be, Night.”
That was the obvious thing to say. But whatever Red was, he wasn’t about the obvious. He hadn’t been in the room for Sunday’s and my chameleon conversation. All I could think was that if the Order had altered Miguel’s magic, they might have altered his personality. Or he might have had experiences that had changed him utterly. All of that was true. But Red was talking about emotion. About feeling I might once have had for Miguel. It was what had stayed my hand out there.
“He might not deserve that much consideration,” Red said.
I needed to remember that. “Understood.”
Red held my gaze a moment, then nodded.
“I have a practical request,” I said. “Got any spare clothes you want to donate to the cause?”
“For Miguel?” he asked.
“He’s conspicuous as hell, wearing Faith’s outfit.”
“I find myself wanting to know how he got a hold of her clothes,” Red said.
One hundred percent. “You’re not the only one.”
I waited for him to put something together, then led the way into the living room with Red on my heels. Sunday was bent over Miguel, a syringe in her hand.
I cracked a small smile. Miguel-as-Faith had called Sunday with an emergency, after all. What did a former Order operative bring to an emergency?
“Hide that in your coat?” I asked.
Sunday nodded.
“Your gun, too?” I asked.
“Like I had time to go for that,” she said.
Just like old times.
Sunday shrugged. “Be prepared.”
Red shook his head. “The things they don’t teach you in the Scouts. How long will he stay out?”
Sunday plunged the needle into Miguel’s neck. “Couple of hours, give or take. Plenty of time to transport and get him set up.”
Plenty of time? No such thing. “And dress him.”
Now that the threat of immediate violence had passed and we had a plan, I couldn’t help but think about what could’ve happened if I’d been a split-second later with my reaction time—what Miguel might’ve done to the people I loved, what could still happen to them if we weren’t careful.
I couldn’t help wondering whether, even with the formidable skill set Sunday and I had between the two of us, we were in over our heads with Miguel.
My head discounted that thought completely. We had everything under control.
My heart didn’t believe that for a minute.
Chapter 3
SUNDAY’S BASEMENT LOOKED and felt like a souvenir from our time in the Order. It had been unfinished when she moved in two weeks ago, nothing but a concrete floor and concrete walls stinking of mothballs, lit by long, thin fluorescents that washed the color out of everything and everyone. The washer and dryer, water heater, and furnace had looked forlorn, like lonely children banished to the corner for bad behavior.
In the time since she’d moved, she hadn’t done much with the parts of the house most people considered important. Instead, she’d spent time getting ready for trouble on the way. She’d been goddamn busy.
She’d install
ed some company for the sullen appliances in the form of three metal kennels large enough to hold a Great Dane—or a handful of Order operatives. She’d hung thick black foam baffling on the walls and the ceiling. She’d outfitted the space with three metal chairs, one of which she’d bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. She’d pulled all the light fixtures except one, situated just overhead. She’d brought down a metal kitchen cart outfitted with a few essential pieces—white plastic zip ties, a scalpel, a saw, a pair of pliers, a jug of water, a stack of thick white terrycloth towels.
She didn’t need any of the weapons, of course. She was a weapon. But who knew when the threat she’d use them might come in handy? Definitely a scream-all-you-want situation for anyone unlucky enough to become her prisoner.
All of that aside, there was one more essential thing Sunday had done to outfit her basement to handle whatever the Order, or anyone else, sent our way: layers of magical protection. A film of invisibility set into the walls, floor, and ceiling that I could see the same way I could see people’s halos. It shimmered like a heat wave over a road in high summer. Above that, a set of wards had been locked into place, as hard and cold as a set of steel doors The layer on top of that, closest to the interior of the room, acted as a mirror. It reflected back all magic sent toward it.
This place was hard, if not impossible, for another magician to see. Even if they could, they’d have to breach the shield of energetic steel. For anyone inside the space, good luck sending out a message or a signal.
Sunday had made the basement as safe as she could, the equivalent of a magical Faraday cage. Good thing, too. We needed it now.
Together, Sunday and I poured Miguel’s limp body into the bolted chair, stripping off his black-and-gray plaid shirt, but leaving him with the modesty and warmth of his black turtleneck for the time being. He was heavier than he looked. Moving him left me winded.
Sunday wasn’t breathing hard, but her skin was flushed pink with the effort. She slipped out of her black trench, letting it fall to the floor. Wisps of blond curls stuck to her cheeks. She brushed them away, tucking them behind her ears. Plucking a rubber band from her pocket, she reached up to tuck her unruly hair into a loose bun that perched precariously on the top of her head.
All told, it had taken us half an hour to get Miguel loaded into the car and over to Sunday’s. No one had looked askance at us on the drive. If Sunday’s neighbors had noticed us helping our unconscious friend up the sidewalk beneath the dripping needles of the fir trees in her yard, they’d kept it to themselves.
It was almost as if we were charmed.
The feeling hit me hard enough to give me pause. It wasn’t something I would normally think or feel.
I believed in intuition. I believed in trusting my gut. Those things were tools, just like my magic, or Sunday’s gun, which she’d migrated from her coat to her waistband—she had no desire to encounter another need and not have it on her for backup.
“This is too good to be true,” I said.
She waved off my concern.
“In broad daylight. In a city. With the Order tracking us,” I said.
She met my gaze. “We’re as good as we’ll ever be right here.”
True. But. “Something’s off.”
“Maybe so. What say we wake this asshole up and find out?”
I sighed. “Safety first. Pass me some zip ties.”
She tossed me one and took the other herself. We cuffed Miguel’s hands to the chair legs. I pulled mine tight enough to cut off his circulation.
He looked so peaceful in his stillness. Not deadly at all. A thin coat of mud streaked the toes of his black boots, as if he’d simply been careless while walking instead of having been dragged across rain-soaked earth. His head lolled to the left, his breathing slow and steady. His long, braided black hair had absorbed its share of rain, enough to create a slow trickle of water down the back of his shirt. He had a serious set of bags under his eyes—hadn’t slept well, if at all, for a few days.
Miguel’s halo still had the strange, bruised purple cast. It no longer shifted or changed as I watched, maybe because he was unconscious. I didn’t know enough about chameleons to understand the whys and wherefores of their life force and how it looked.
I pulled off my coat, draping it over the back of the closest empty chair, while Sunday pulled the jug of water from the kitchen cart, uncapped it, and splashed him across the face. He sputtered awake, a shiver running in a wave from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
“Afternoon,” Sunday said.
He peered at her, his dark brown pupils dilated, seeming to crowd out the whites of his eyes.
“So, you’re all grown up,” she said.
He cleared his throat. His words were tinged with disdain. “You ever get what you wanted from Night? Make her yours?”
“You never liked me,” she said. “The feeling’s mutual, so I’m gonna let your tone slide.”
He tried on a half-smile, but couldn’t quite make it work. “I was your competition.”
“Damn right,” Sunday said.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I’d loved them both from the get-go. I’d never cared whether they liked each other. I’d only been glad to have both of them in those first days of confusion after the Order had brought us into the fold, and in the time that came after. When you’re being trained to kill, and people you came to care about occasionally disappeared without a trace or died because they couldn’t make the cut, the whole world became death. Having a little light to hold onto was a lifeline.
“Well,” I said. “Now that we’ve established our feelings, I have some questions.” I hunkered down in front of Miguel so that he didn’t have to look up to see my face. To see me. If he had any feelings for me after all these years—and he certainly was playing that angle—I might be able to take advantage of them.
He held my gaze. “Ask me all about the Order’s plans. You know I won’t be able to tell you anything critical.”
Not at the top of my list. “How did you get close enough to Faith to copy her?”
“Easiest thing in the world to find her and her friends at the coffee shop,” he said. “I took a seat at the next table.”
Normal teenager thing, picking up a coffee drink with more sugar than the human body can handle and hanging out with her friends. She would’ve given the place the once-over, checking for anyone who looked suspicious—that was still second nature. We hadn’t been in Portland long enough for her to have lost her on the run habits.
Miguel wouldn’t have looked suspicious in the least. It was his nature to blend in.
“And her clothes?” I asked.
“I took them from her friend’s place. The redhead with the white cat.”
“If I find out you hurt her, you’re dead,” I said.
“She’s not your daughter,” he said. “Not really. How can you care so much?”
I stared at him. “How long has it been since you cared about anyone? Since anyone cared about you?”
He averted his gaze.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “We thought you died that night. That you drowned.”
He shook his head, then winced. The sedative Sunday had given him packed a punch. “I never went into the water,” he said. “The mentors pushed you in, then grabbed me and tossed me into a waiting van. I thought I was being culled.”
Those occasional disappearances happened when a trainee didn’t measure up, when the Order had no use for them, not even as diversions or as proverbial cannon fodder. But what had happened to Miguel didn’t fit the MO for culling. He’d been about to be pushed into the river along with Sunday and me. He hadn’t been disappeared. The mentors had wanted us to think he was dead.
“Where did they take you?” I asked.
He studied the floor for a moment before looking back at me. “Back to HQ.”
Where the rest of us lived and trained. “How’s that possible? We never saw you agai
n.”
“You think you know everything about that place?” he asked.
“I know I don’t,” I said. There were places only mentors had clearance to enter, for instance. I had ideas about how much space their inner sanctum comprised, but clearly my ideas were bullshit.
“There are whole areas that function separate and apart from the main facility.” He lowered his voice so that I had to listen carefully to hear. “Places that aren’t entirely in this world.”
Sunday bent, resting her hands on her thighs. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means exactly what I said. Those places are interfaces between the human world and other worlds. Realms where the crazy shit lives. Demons. Faeries.”
We’d been taught about the other beings. About the kinds of magical law enforcement that kept them in line when they entered the human world. The mild surprise on Sunday’s face masked a deeper shock that I could read in her because I knew her so well.
I felt it, too. The idea that the Order’s headquarters was only partially located in the human world was news—the kind of news that fell into place like the missing piece of a puzzle.
The Angel of Death was the secret head of the Order. If he’d had a place within the confines of the Order’s headquarters, it wouldn’t have been in the human world.
I narrowed my eyes at Miguel. “Did you live in one of those spaces—in another realm? And they made you into a chameleon there?”
“They make all chameleons,” he said. “We can only be created in a place like that, in the In-Between. It’s an inhuman place, or at least a place where humans shouldn’t go. Dangerous. Full of desperate things—like a bunch of teenage assassin wannabes being tortured and shaped into new magical creatures.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” I asked.
He didn’t answer that question right away. “The two mentors who watched you and Sunday that night, the night of the water, he stayed with you, right? But a third one, that guy took me back to HQ and down a set of concrete stairs that eventually turned to hand-carved stone. They were steep and too tall for human legs. I fell twice. Got all scraped up. Bloody knuckles. Bloody knees. I was scared out of my mind.”
Night Rises: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 2) Page 4