Fury (Institute of Unpredictable Magic Book 2)

by Sadie Moss

  Fury

  Institute of Unpredictable Magic #2

  Sadie Moss

  Copyright © 2021 by Sadie Moss

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Also by Sadie Moss

  Chapter 1

  Do you ever feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?

  That’s pretty much my whole life right now.

  Since the whole, uh, thing with my first assignment at IUM, things have been weirdly… normal.

  The strange magic that followed us to Portland has faded off the radar and hasn’t shown up again. No one can quite explain why it happened, but since it seems to have gone away, Logan and I are focusing on other assignments for the time being.

  It’s been nice, actually—aside from the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this peace can’t possibly last.

  I’m trying to take advantage of it while it does last though. I want to prove myself as an excellent IUM agent, and I feel like I barely scraped by with my first assignment. Stone praised us, Logan’s proud of me, and I haven’t heard anyone say anything disparaging about our work, but how much do the opinions of others really matter when I’m not happy with myself?

  I would like another more challenging project sometime in the future, but right now, I’m glad to be helping young Unpredictables and taking care of business that doesn’t involve an insane mage who’s trying to kill us. Actually, even if I do get more challenging assignments, I’d like to never deal with an insane mage trying to kill us ever again. That would be lovely.

  Today, we’re in Boston. It’s great to be on the East Coast again, near where my siblings are, even if I can’t see them. It wouldn’t be professional of me to use the portals at IUM headquarters to hop over and see my family while I’m supposed to be working. But it’s nice to be back in my old stomping grounds, even if it’s just for an afternoon.

  Logan seems to be in a good mood too. Not that he’s often in a bad one. We’ve been trying to figure out this… thing between us, tiptoeing around it a bit. After what he told me up in the mountains, I know exactly how he feels about me, and how interested he is in pursuing a real relationship.

  Even though we work together.

  Even though there are unresolved feelings between me and two other men.

  Even if I decide to pursue those feelings.

  It’s crazy. I’ve never known a guy like Logan—someone confident enough to even consider sharing a woman he likes with other men. It overwhelms me a little to think about it, but not in a bad way.

  I wish I was better at this whole dating thing, though. I’ve never actually dated anyone before, if that’s the right word for what we’re doing. We’re hanging out together at each other’s places after work, but we’re not going out to places together. We’re not telling anyone anything, that’s for sure. We’re coworkers, partners at IUM, and even though I really want to see where things go between us, I also don’t want to get reassigned.

  So right now, everything’s in a bit of a nebulous, undefined place. Which is a good thing, right?

  Urgh. When I say I’m bad at this relationship thing, I really mean it.

  I want to ask him. I want to turn to him right this second and blurt, hey, are we a couple? Because you seemed to want that, but you haven’t said anything official since then, so I don’t know if you changed your mind or something…

  But there’s no way I can get those words out of my mouth. I’d be way too embarrassed to lay it all out there like that. Logan’s already told me he wants me, and that he wouldn’t mind sharing me if that’s what I want. So I feel kind of like the ball’s in my court here.

  Insert sports metaphor about me fucking this up royally here, I think to myself dryly, then snort a laugh.

  Logan looks down at me curiously as our portal opens in the North End, and I shake my head and wave him off. His blue eyes burn with curiosity, but he drags his gaze away from me to take in our surroundings. This area is a great place to visit if you want to get Italian food, seeing as there’s a pizza shop on every single corner.

  He runs a hand through his dark blond hair and grins. “We can get lunch after, right?”

  “We’re working,” I point out, but he looks so giddy that I can’t help but smile right back at him.

  “Ah, come on, Rae, live a little.” He elbows me gently. “I mean, we have to take a lunch break anyway, so what does it matter if we do it here instead of back at headquarters?”

  I mean, he’s got a point, I suppose. We do have to eat lunch at some point, and it’s not like Lito’s draining his life force keeping the portal open or anything. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  Logan just gives me a sly look, like he knows that really means ‘yes,’ and he’s just waiting for me to acknowledge it. It should be a downside of having a partner, being paired with someone who knows me and reads me so well, but it doesn’t feel that way. Logan and I are so similar, and I see more and more evidence of that every day. It was why he frustrated me so much when we first met each other, and I felt so competitive with him. Sometimes I worry it means we’ll be too similar, and that we’ll rub each other the wrong way. That we’ll clash.

  But so far, that hasn’t happened. I know they say that opposites attract, but honestly? It’s really nice to have someone who just gets me. Who understands things like my drive to succeed and my perfectionism because he’s the same way. I get plenty of compassion and sympathy from my siblings because they want to support me, but they don’t quite understand—they’re not empathetic, and sometimes a girl needs that.

  Take my sister Penelope, for example. She’s a hard worker and a genius, but she’s the type of genius where it always came easy to her. She didn’t have to think about it. She just loses herself in her work and is full of passion for it. I’ve had to work hard to achieve all of my goals, where she has natural talent. Not that I’d want to switch places with her. I value myself and the skills I’ve developed, even though I admire Penelope immensely. But she hasn’t had to bust her butt quite as hard as I have to get where she is today, so she can’t fully understand me the way Logan does.

  It’s just such a relief to look over at him and know that he knows how I feel. And the fact that he’s over six feet of sculpted muscle with a gorgeous face and infectious smile? Well, that makes it nice to look at him too.

  My p
hone buzzes as we walk up to the building that has the magical signature radiating from it.

  Ah. Speaking of opposites attracting…

  “Is that Nick again?” Logan asks, sounding amused.

  “Probably.” I check my phone as Logan opens the door and ushers me through. We’re going to an apartment above a Sicilian grocery mart. Yeah, welcome to the North End.

  But it turns out the text isn’t from Nick. It’s from Penelope, checking in to see how I’m doing.

  Me: Great.

  I haven’t told them details, because the work I do at IUM is confidential, but they’re aware that my first job was a bit of a tough one. On a whim, I type out a second message.

  Me: Guess where I am.

  We get up the stairs, and Logan knocks on the front door of the apartment. Penelope guesses Hawaii, Paris, and New Orleans before giving up.

  Me: Nope. Boston.

  I grin as I hit “send,” then stuff my phone away as the door opens and a nervous-looking girl peers out at us.

  She’s only a few years younger than I am, or looks to be, but the terrified look on her face makes her appear a lot younger than that at the moment. “What do you want?”

  I can’t blame her attitude. Unpredictables were treated pretty poorly for a long time, and people whose magic sparks with Unpredictable powers are still understandably nervous that they’re going to be issued the dreaded ultimatum: wear a magic-dampening cuff and go to a specific school to control your powers, or have your magic ripped away from you.

  “Hi,” Logan says, smiling in that soothing way of his. He usually starts in with the people we find—the ones who have just developed Unpredictable magic. He’s got this kind, big brother attitude that sets people at ease. Like there’s no possible way he could be a bad guy. “I’m Agent DeWitt, from the Institute of Unpredictable Magic. This here is my partner, Agent Parker. We were hoping we could talk to you for a moment?”

  The girl still looks wary, and Logan nods, as if in response to something she’s said. “I know, it’s pretty scary what just happened. But that’s why we’re here. We’re going to help you.”

  I smile at her, trying to remember what it was like when I first got my powers. Not that I have to try very hard. It’s not something you really forget. One moment I was doing my thing, no magic whatsoever, the next I was pushing furniture out of the way with the force of my mind.

  “We’re not here to force you into anything,” I promise her. “I understand how you feel. Trust me, I felt the same way when I got my powers. But it’s not like that anymore. You’re safe. We’re Unpredictable too, and we’re here to help you.”

  The girl looks back and forth between us, and then opens her door farther, inviting us in. “My parents are at work.”

  “No problem. We can wait to talk to them, or come back later, if you want—but this is about you. You’re an adult, and you can make your own choices.”

  Logan smiles at her again as he speaks. The girl smiles back a little this time, her cheeks going pink. Yeah, he has that effect on everyone. Everybody gets a crush on him, and I can’t even blame them.

  The same damn thing happened to me.

  Is still happening, really.

  “We’re just going to ask you a few questions,” I explain. “Mind if we sit down? Then we’ll go over your options and help you decide what you’d like to do now that you have magic.”

  Griffin Academy was once the only place that you could go if you were Unpredictable and wanted to keep your magic instead of having it taken away. And Griffin’s great, don’t get me wrong—I went there for school, after all—but it still felt weird to be basically forced to go there. Especially now that the ban is lifted, more Unpredictables are coming out of the woodwork. Back in the day, a lot of people would just cut and run when they got their powers. Or they would choose to have their powers taken away to try to live a ‘normal’ life.

  Now that having their powers taken away isn’t something we’re forcing on people anymore, there are even more Unpredictables that need training, and Griffin can’t possibly handle them all, so a couple of other schools are cropping up. There’s one right here on the East Coast that this girl will probably want to go to, since it’ll be near her parents.

  The more we talk to her, the more excited she gets. Her name is Jessica, she tells us, she’s twenty years old, and she can control electricity.

  “At first I thought it was telekinesis, but it’s only electrical stuff,” she explains, sounding happy to be able to talk about her power with someone.

  Man, it’s so good to see that she’s more excited than scared. It wasn’t that way a few years ago. I was part of the first wave of Unpredictables after Elliot Sinclair and her crew helped change everyone’s minds and rescued our society from a power hungry jackass who tried to take over.

  I’m not exactly a friendly or tactile person, but I suddenly want to reach across the coffee table and hold this girl’s hand, to squeeze it tight and smile right along with her.

  I’m so freaking grateful that things are going to be okay for her.

  She doesn’t have to be afraid.

  “Can you tell me what classes are like?” Jessica asks.

  Logan was ahead of me, school-wise, so things were different for him. He got his powers early for an Unpredictable, at age seventeen, so he went to Griffin before the whole Unpredictable ban was lifted. He looks at me expectantly, and I know what he’s thinking—that it’s best if I share my experience, since I got my powers after the ban, and my experience will be more positive, closer to what Jessica’s going to experience when she goes to her chosen school.

  “It’s amazing,” I assure her.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket several times in a row. I have to bite down the giddy smile that starts to cross my face as I focus on explaining to Jessica what it was like at Griffin.

  When I get a bunch of texts in a row like that, it’s always just one person: Nick.

  He’s incorrigible, but then again, I’m encouraging him. I can admit that much. Just like with Logan, I’m not exactly sure what I am with Nick. He kissed me right after we got back from our showdown with that crazy magic user, and it was the kind of kiss that imprints itself on your soul.

  But since then…

  He’s not technically our work partner—not the way Logan and I are partners, despite the fact that we all worked together on that particular job. Nick is just a rich genius who likes to study magic and will stroll in and out of IUM like he owns the place. He tinkers around with magic and science like the entire universe is his playground.

  He’s also surprisingly compassionate, selfless, hugely intelligent, and playful. He makes me laugh. And I know I shouldn’t look at my phone right now, but the temptation is strong.

  We explain everything to Jessica and leave her with some informational pamphlets and our phone numbers so that she can call us if she has any questions. I pull my phone out once we’re finished, shaking my head at Nick’s texts.

  Nick: Any updates on the magical signature?

  Nick: I bet you look cute today.

  Nick: Know any good bars in Portland?

  Nick: What’s the weather like?

  Nick: I’ve created an awesome new gadget. I think I’ll name it after you.

  Nick: Yes, I name all my gadgets.

  It’s adorable, and I can feel myself smiling already. His nerdiness complements mine pretty damn perfectly.

  Logan’s phone goes off, and he pulls it out too, looking at it with raised eyebrows. Then he grins.

  “Nick?” I ask.

  “Who else?” he replies, putting his cell back into his pocket. “I’ll respond in a little bit. We’re on the clock, and the guy could stand to learn some patience.”

  Logan and Nick are definitely getting along better than they did at the start of all this. They balance each other out really well, I think. Logan’s hardworking, focused, and level-headed. Nick is the human equivalent of setting off a massive firework in
a small, enclosed space.

  Those differences meant that they clashed at first, and to be fair, I also clashed with Nick at first, so I can’t blame Logan at all. There was also the whole ‘we both like the same girl’ thing that was going on. But now that’s resolved.

  I think.

  I mean, Logan straight up told me that he’d be open to letting me explore things with Nick too, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know for sure what I am with either man. Did we all somehow agree to be in a relationship, and I just missed the memo? Do Logan and Nick both think they’re my boyfriends? Have I missed the glowing neon signs that there’s something going on? Or are they just content to flirt and wait for me to say anything to make it official?

  Gaahhhh…

  This is why I never dated anyone in school, I had enough to worry about with grades and internships without tacking this kind of relationship stress on top of it.

  I send Nick a text in return, answering his first question first.

  Me: No, we haven’t picked up that magical signature again.

  Tracking down a particular person’s magic is complicated.

  Think of it like a cell phone. You can track someone’s cell phone, but only if that cell phone is turned on. If it’s turned off or the battery’s dead, you can’t track it, because it’s not turned on and giving off the signals that we rely on to find it. Same with a magical signature. We can only track it so long as the magic is being used. If a person isn’t using their magic, then it’s like a cell phone turned off. It would be convenient—although also a bit terrifying—if you could get a hit of someone’s magical signature just once and then track them forever, but that’s not how it works.