Steel for 5 (Mags & Nats Book 3)

by Stephanie Fazio

I bristled, but with no other option that would save me and my friends endless humiliation, I did as I was told. As soon as my skin was just skin again, I felt a small prick in my forearm.

  I glanced to the side in time to see Cinnamon Guy pulling out the needle he’d just stuck me with.

  “What the—”

  “It’s temporary,” Cinnamon Guy said. “Ten minutes, and you’ll be back to your kickass self.”

  That was when I felt my magic slipping away. It retreated deep inside me where I couldn’t reach it. My power was still there, but it was like it was hidden underneath a heavy blanket. I couldn’t call it to the surface.

  “What the fuck, Cinnamon Guy?” I whisper-shouted, trying not to panic.

  I’d never been unable to reach my magic before. My pulse began to race as thoughts of the Magical Reduction Potion flooded my brain.

  No. No no no.

  “Cinnamon Guy?” he repeated.

  I wrapped my hand around his throat and squeezed. “What did you do?!”

  “Ten minutes,” he croaked. “I swear. It’s in me, too. It’s why you can’t feel my magic.”

  I believed him, and not just because we both knew I could kill him. The past four months of dealing with criminals and people who might threaten my friends’ lives had made me an expert at reading body language.

  Cinnamon Guy was telling the truth.

  While I was relieved, I was no less pissed off.

  “You had no right,” I said, barely able to stop myself from punching him in the face—magic or not.

  If I could have done it without drawing the cop’s attention, I would have.

  “I’m trying to keep us both from getting arrested,” Cinnamon Guy hissed. “I knew Mag cops were patrolling this area.” He narrowed his eyes and glared at me. “The one factor I didn’t count on was an angry little Steel messing with my plans.”

  I didn’t have a chance to snap back. Cinnamon Guy grabbed my arm and yanked me down onto my belly, just as the cop’s flashlight beam crested the hill. The light swept back and forth way too close to where we were hiding.

  I tried to will myself into invisibility.

  The cop’s boots tapped the pavement.

  If he came much closer, there would be nothing to hide us. Turn around, I silently begged the cop. Nothing to see here.

  For a few seconds, I thought my desperate telepathic plea had been answered. The cop turned to the side, looking off into the distance. My stomach sank when I realized what had caught his attention. Cinnamon Guy’s motorcycle.

  We both cursed under our breaths—me in English and Cinnamon Guy in Spanish. The motorcycle was too far to be useful to us without revealing our position, but close enough to give us away.

  I got ready to run, but Cinnamon Guy yanked me back.

  “He’ll taser you,” Cinnamon Guy warned. “There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

  I held back a retort about how the taser wouldn’t have affected me if I’d still had my magic.

  “What do we do?” I asked in a breathless whisper.

  “Make out with me.”

  I gaped at Cinnamon Guy.

  “It’s the only way,” he insisted. “Trust me.”

  “As if.”

  I managed a little squeak when Cinnamon Guy grabbed my shoulder and flipped me onto my back.

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” I hissed.

  Apparently, he was. Cinnamon Guy rolled on top of me. His lips hovered an inch above mine.

  I reached up to his chest to thrust him off…and possibly break his sternum, when the cop’s flashlight landed just feet from us. With no other choice, and hoping against hope the imbecile on top of me knew what he was doing, I let the situation play out.

  I caught a hint of his spicy gum as he stroked his thumb across my cheek. And then, he angled his face to fit our mouths together.

  His kiss was soft and unhurried. It was like he had all the time in the world and wasn’t in jeopardy of getting an elbow to the kidney…or a taser to his back.

  Just when I thought I had a handle on things, Cinnamon Guy ratcheted up the heat on the kiss index. He cradled the back of my neck with his hand, drawing my mouth more firmly against his. And…damn. This guy knew what he was doing.

  “Open for me, cariño,” Cinnamon Guy whispered. His tongue traced the seam of my lips.

  I couldn’t help myself. I kissed him back.

  When I wrapped my arms around him, Cinnamon Guy let out a low, husky groan. Both of our hearts were hammering together in a fierce, staccato rhythm. I felt Cinnamon Guy’s callused fingertips on the bare skin of my waist. I didn’t even care that he was taking liberties I never allowed during first kisses.

  This was not a normal first kiss. This wasn’t a normal any kind of kiss.

  I slid one hand up his back, feeling his muscles ripple beneath his thin shirt. My other got lost in his soft hair.

  “Freeze!”

  The shout punched through my foggy brain, and I jerked back on a gasp.

  Oh no. The cop was standing directly over us, his flashlight blinding me.

  Cinnamon Guy got to his feet, slowly, and put out a hand to help me up. He pushed me a little behind him so my profile was mostly hidden. I was sure he had his own nefarious reasons for hiding my identity, but I was grateful nonetheless. The last thing I needed was to be tomorrow’s headline because of this.

  “Sorry about that, Officer,” Cinnamon Guy said, his voice betraying no hint of the storm raging inside me. “We thought we were alone.”

  “What in the heck are the two of you doing out here?” the cop demanded, his voice laden with suspicion.

  Before I could even begin to come up with a response, Cinnamon Guy reached back for my arm, wrapping it around his stomach. He shifted very slightly, so the cop’s line of sight was turned away from the desecrated grave.

  “Do you want me to spell it out for you, Officer?” Cinnamon Guy asked. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

  “It’s illegal to be in the cemetery after hours,” the cop said, sounding as out of sorts as I felt. “I’m going to have to call this into the Nat police.”

  He unhooked a walkie-talkie from his belt.

  “We’re really sorry, Officer,” I said, surprising myself by speaking up. I even added a hint of a whine. To keep the cop from looking too closely at me, I nuzzled my face into the back of Cinnamon Guy’s shirt.

  “Yeah,” Cinnamon Guy agreed. “It’s just.” He leaned in closer to the cop, as though they were two guys conspiring over a beer. “It’s my girl’s kink.”

  I choked.

  “Cemeteries?” the cop asked, sounding embarrassed and a little intrigued.

  “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, Officer.” Cinnamon Guy reached back to squeeze my hip. “And I’d try anything for my girl.”

  I dug my nails into his back to remind him that I was going to kill him as soon as our only witness left.

  The cop scratched the back of his head. “Alright,” he said on a sigh, tucking his walkie-talkie back into his belt. “But I’m going to need to take down your information and issue a small fine. Just covering my own ass, you understand.”

  I was panicking, but Cinnamon Guy gave the cop a sage nod.

  “Of course, Officer. Let me get our IDs from my bike.”

  Cinnamon Guy lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it before he started to back slowly away toward his bike. I narrowed my gaze.

  What are you up to?

  In response, he winked at me. He got a few more paces. And then, he broke into a run.

  “Hey!” the cop shouted.

  The cop hurried after Cinnamon Guy. I joined in the chase.

  We were too slow.

  That slippery bastard hopped on his bike and revved the engine.

  “No!”

  “Get back here!” the cop yelled, chasing after the motorcycle.

  Cinnamon Guy turned in his seat and blew me a kiss before leading the cop away.

  I
screamed in frustration.

  At that moment, a new set of headlights came down the drive. I recognized Michael behind the wheel of our van.

  “Stop him!” I screeched, pointing. The motorcycle raced across the grass, hopped a curb, and then slid neatly through a narrow opening in the chain-link fence.

  I sucked in a breath as my magic came back in a rush. My skin shimmered titanium under the light of the street lamp. My magic had returned, but it was too late. Cinnamon Guy was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Don’t worry about it,” Kaira said, after I’d finished explaining the situation. I was breathing heavily as I tried to rein in my temper.

  Kaira grinned. “Charlotte and Sir Zachary also found out where Cinnamon Guy lives.”

  “Seriously?”

  My fury was instantly replaced with a seething anticipation.

  “Yep,” Graysen replied. “Should we head over there now?”

  “Look at Bri’s face,” A.J. said. “Do you really need to ask?”

  “Step on it, Michael,” Yutika ordered.

  On our way to Cinnamon Guy’s apartment, I envisioned all the ways I’d kill him when I got my hands on him. It would definitely be a slow death, full of pain and screaming.

  “You’ve got your scary Steel face on,” A.J. observed.

  “Just plotting,” I replied.

  Sir Zachary licked my hand, which helped cool my bloodlust. A little. Cinnamon Guy brought out something ugly and violent I hadn’t known I had inside me.

  I barely waited for the van to come to a stop before I was jumping out.

  Michael sweet-talked a woman who had just gotten out of her car into giving up her excellent parking spot. Cinnamon Guy’s apartment was on a busy street in Allston where a lot of BSMU students lived, and parking was scarce.

  Kaira illusioned all of us to look like students, complete with backpacks. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a glass windowpane and saw I had become an Asian woman with freckles and chin-length black hair. Even Sir Zachary got an appearance makeover, since A.J. had made our dog as well-known as the rest of us.

  The door to the apartment building was locked. I was eager enough to go wring Cinnamon Guy’s neck that I would have just yanked the door off its hinges, but A.J. stopped me.

  “Best not to draw attention to ourselves just yet,” he said, patting my arm.

  He then proceeded to press the call button for every single unit in the building.

  A chorus of Hello’s and What do you want’s poured out of the speakers.

  “We forgot our keyyyy,” A.J. whined, pressing his mouth almost all the way against the speaker. “Help us!”

  “What are you doing?” Kaira asked him.

  “Aren’t BSMU students drunk all the time?” A.J. fired back.

  “Um, no,” Graysen said.

  A.J. gave us all a triumphant Ha! when the lock on the door clicked. Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the handle and let us in.

  The building was nothing special…rickety elevator that could only fit half of us at a time, worn carpet, and that distinct college apartment smell. Not that I would know, since I hadn’t been able to apply for college after I went unMarked. My only experience with higher ed was visiting Brent and Sarah when they’d been students at UConn’s Magic Campus.

  After Lilly died, I had been powerless to alleviate my family’s grief. To keep myself from going out of my mind, I’d gotten involved with helping unMarked Mags who were trying to flee to Boston. A lot of them were stuck in dangerous situations and unable to defend themselves against the ones hunting them.

  I had thrown myself into the work, needing the distraction. I’d become addicted to helping strangers, since there was nothing I could do for the people I loved most.

  I helped enough people escape their homes that the Alliance started wising up to my involvement. My choices were either to stop cold turkey or make it impossible for the authorities to track me down.

  So, during my senior year of high school, I decided to go unMarked. I was risking my life by breaking the second high law, which required all Mags to be Marked, but I didn’t care.

  I’d never regretted cutting out my tracker, but I also hadn’t accounted for how isolated I’d become. I’d had no choice but to hide out in my parents’ house until I encountered Kaira and the rest of our friends. It turned out they had the same goals as me, except they were a lot more effective. They’d needed muscle to rescue a Russian family that was seeking sanctuary in Boston, and I’d volunteered.

  Becoming part of the Six had saved me. It had drawn me away from the despair that had been swallowing the rest of my family whole.

  “You okay?” Yutika whispered, nudging me as we walked down the long hallway.

  “I’ll be better once we’re done with Cinnamon Guy,” I told her, following Sir Zachary around the corner as he led the way to the right unit.

  “That makes one of us,” Yutika sighed.

  “You have a boyfriend,” I pointed out.

  “It doesn’t make me blind,” she retorted.

  Sir Zachary stopped in front of a door with chipping paint. He wagged his tail.

  “Should we knock,” Graysen began, “or—”

  I kicked the door in.

  “Never mess with a Steel,” A.J. said behind me. “Five words that could save your life one day.”

  I flipped the light switch by the door.

  When Cinnamon Guy didn’t come running with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, disappointment roiled through me.

  I wanted a fight, and once again, this man had deprived me of what I needed.

  What a jerk.

  My friends filtered into the apartment behind me. Michael wrestled the door back into place while the rest of us spread out to look around.

  It was a studio apartment, so there wasn’t much to explore. There was a small kitchen, a slightly larger main room, and a separate bathroom. The place had a clean, almost sterile feel to it. There were no pictures on the walls, workout clothes strewn on the floor, or half-empty boxes of cookies like an intruder would find in my room. Cinnamon Guy didn’t even have a real bed; it was just a mattress in the center of the floor with a plain blue comforter. Beside the mattress, there was a lamp with no lampshade. A black dresser against the wall completed the no-frills décor.

  “There’s no chocolate in here,” Yutika said, her voice coming from inside the fridge. “But someone definitely lives here.” She wrinkled her nose as she pulled out a bag of spinach and half gallon of skim milk. “I’m totally judging Sexy Cinnamon Man for his boring diet. Although, hey—are those ghost peppers?!”

  “Are we sure this is his place?” Michael asked, looking around.

  I picked up the pack of cinnamon gum on the counter.

  “Yep.”

  “Everyone shut up for a second,” Smith said.

  We did. Our Techie closed his eyes and stood motionless. After a few seconds, he strode over to the mattress and pulled back the blanket. He tossed aside the pillow to reveal a laptop.

  “Come to Papa,” Smith said.

  I waited impatiently for the computer to give up its secrets to Smith.

  “Jackpot,” Kaira called, closing the bottom dresser drawer.

  “Did you find the other half of Pruwist’s paper?” I asked, my pulse skyrocketing.

  “No,” Kaira replied. “But I found these.” She held up a stack of stuffed manilla folders.

  We all gathered around Cinnamon Guy’s bed, with the exception of Yutika and Sir Zachary, who continued to explore. I ignored the way the blanket smelled like him and reminded me of what was inarguably the hottest kiss I’d ever experienced.

  Kaira opened the folders and let the papers inside flutter out. We all stared.

  “These are descriptions of all of the Super Mags,” Smith said, spreading out the papers in front of us. “Looks like he included everything in the Super Mags’ official files, plus a whole lot more.”

  Everything was written by han
d. Grainy printer photos of each Super Mag were taped to the front of each packet.

  “How did he get all of this information?” Michael asked. “Aside from us and the Super Mags, no one else alive has this information.”

  “So we thought,” A.J. said.

  There were pages and pages of information about each of the Super Mags. There was so much packed onto each page that it must have taken Cinnamon Guy years to compile all of this information. The papers were wrinkled and thin from how many times they’d been handled.

  I recognized obsession when I saw it. For some reason, staring at these papers while I sat in this unloved apartment made me feel unbearably sad.

  As we went through the hand-written pages, I noticed something else.

  “Look at this.” I tapped one of the papers.

  Underneath a general description of the Super Mag’s abilities, there was a section that Cinnamon Guy had labeled Threat Assessment.

  As we leafed through the papers, we found that Cinnamon Guy had classified each Super Mag on a four-tier system, where Tier 1 Super Mags were the highest threat and needed to be “dealt with ASAP,” while those labeled as Tier 4 were considered less deadly.

  “Look at this,” Graysen said. He held up several stapled pages. The cover page was a blown-up photo of the Pyro who had recently had his magic stolen. Beneath the photo, there was a single, hand-written word.

  COMPLETE.

  The two other Super Mags who had recently lost their magic were also marked as complete.

  “Holy vegan baloney,” A.J. said in disbelief. “If anyone wanted undeniable proof, we’ve got it. We found our magic ripper.”

  A dozen emotions went through me, the first of which was disappointment. I’d known the guy was a dick, but I hadn’t gotten evil vibes from him.

  Idiot, I told myself. What did I really know about him, besides the fact that he was a smart aleck and a fantastic kisser?

  The lack of passion in my life was going to my head. I seriously needed to get laid.

  Graysen said, “I wonder whether he’s brewing the MRP himself or if he’s got an Alchemist on his payroll.”

  “The former, most definitely,” Yutika called from Cinnamon Guy’s bathroom. “Check it out.”

  We crowded outside the bathroom and stared in. Yutika had shoved aside the white shower curtain to reveal the inside of the tub. In addition to body wash and shampoo, there was what looked like a professional chemistry set. Beakers, tubes ciphering liquid from one to the other, packets of various mystery powders, and vials of Agent S filled the tub. There was even a Bunsen burner on the counter next to Cinnamon Guy’s toothbrush and razor.