“That’s the point of distraction,” Michael pointed out, “to keep things as quiet as possible for us.”
A frigid breeze suddenly moved through the hallway.
“Jill is working,” Jamie whispered, the breeze apparently evidence of the ice witch’s work. “That’s our cue to move.”
We walked inside, Jamie lagging behind just long enough to ensure that the door closed silently behind us. “All right, Mikey,” she said, “where do we go?”
Michael nodded, then pressed his hand to the hallway wall. “Down the hall. There’s a room. Empty—no, not empty. A girl. A soul. Damaged. But she’s there.”
He opened his eyes again and looked at me, his expression tortured. It wasn’t hard to guess how he felt about her, even if she didn’t reciprocate those feelings. “She’s there.”
Jamie looked at me, her aqua irises suddenly swirling with fire. Goose bumps rose on my arms. “Then let’s go,” she said.
Without warning, a crash echoed through the building, the floor rumbling beneath us. “Alex,” I murmured. The bringer of earthquakes.
“And probably her crew,” Jamie agreed, taking the lead. “We need to move.”
We hustled down the hallway, pausing at each open door to peek inside, look for Scout, make sure we weren’t walking into a bevy of Reapers. But there was no one, nothing. No signs of people—Reaper or otherwise. Nothing but old, industrial equipment and rusty pipes.
“It’s too quiet,” Jamie said as we neared a set of double doors at the end of the hall. “Distraction or not, this is too quiet.”
“Here,” Michael said, suddenly pushing through the double doors without thought of what might await him on the other side. “She’s . . . here.”
I followed him in, lights flickering above us, the rhythm of the lights as quick as my heartbeat. The room was big and concrete, giant tubs and shelving along the sides. It looked like a storage facility they’d tried to turn into some kind of ceremonial hall, a long red carpet running down the middle aisle, a gold quatrefoil on a purple banner hanging from one end. The Reaper symbol, I realized, there for all to see.
And below the banner lay Scout on a long table, her body buckled down with wide leather straps around each ankle and wrist, her arms pinned to her side.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
She looked pale—even more so than usual. He cheeks seemed sunken, and dark circles lay beneath her eyes. Her collarbone was visible. Her usually vibrant blond and brown hair lay in a pale corona around her head. But for the rise and fall of her chest, I’d have wondered if we’d arrived too late.
I had to bite my lip to keep tears from slipping over my lashes. “What happened to her?” I whispered.
Michael moved around her and began to work one of the buckles around her ankles. “Reapers,” he said. “This is what they do, Lily. They steal things that don’t belong to them.”
Where there had been sadness, fear, trepidation, in his voice . . . now there was fury. Michael tugged at one leather buckle, freed the pin, then pulled loose the strap. “These kids, these adults, these people, think they have the right to take the lives of others, and for what? For what?”
Michael mumbled a string of words in Spanish, and while I didn’t understand exactly what he’d said, I got the gist. The boy was pissed.
He bobbed his head toward her wrists, which were pinned near her head. “Jamie, keep an eye on the door. Get ready to raise flame if we need it. Lily, get her wrist restraints.”
I jumped to the other end of the table and started fumbling with Scout’s restraints. She lifted her head as I reached her, blinking with the one eye that wasn’t bruised and swollen, but she didn’t speak. They must have hit her while she was being restrained. I hoped she fought back. I hoped she gave as good as she got.
“I think you’ve managed to get yourself into some kind of mess here,” I said with a small grin, trying to make her laugh, trying to keep my heart from thumping out of my chest. “I thought you were going to keep yourself safe?”
She tried a smile, but winced in pain. “I’ll try harder next time, Mom,” she said, her voice cracking.
“You’d better,” I said, fumbling with the latch on the first buckle. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”
She nodded, then put her head back on the table. “I’m tired, Lil. I just—I think I’ll just go home and sleep.”
“Stay awake, Scout. We’re going to get you out, but I need you to stay awake.”
“Hurry, Lily,” Michael implored, and I heard the clank as her first ankle restraint was loosed. “I don’t know how much time we’ll have.” He moved around the table to get a better angle on her other ankle.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I assured him.
We’d just managed to untie her, to loosen all her restraints, and help her sit up and swing her feet over the bed when, without warning, the door at the other end of the room, crashed open, falling in on its hinges.
Dark-haired Sebastian, the boy with firespell, walked inside. My breath quickened at the sight of him, and my back tightened at the memory of the pain he’d inflicted. Alex walked in behind him.
“Stay with Scout,” Michael murmured. I nodded, and braced my body to help support her as he stepped away and in front of us, a human shield.
“Oh, look,” Alex said. “It’s an entire band of Buffy wanna-be’s.”
“Better Buffy wanna-be’s than would-be zombies,” Jamie said. “You guys are rotting corpses waiting to happen. That’s gonna put a hitch in those Abercrombie catalog plans, don’t you think?”
Alex growled and tried to take a step toward us, but Sebastian put a hand on her arm.
“I assume the vitriol means you’re all acquainted,” a third person said. Sebastian and Alex stepped aside, and he stepped into the gap between them.
He was tall, thin, silver haired, distinguished looking. He wore a crisp black suit, with a white, button-up shirt beneath. Every hair was in place, every bit of fabric perfectly creased. His eyes were pale blue, watery, red at the edges. But there was something about his eyes—something wrong. They were empty—dangerously empty.
“Mr. Garcia,” he said, his voice flat, bored, as he bobbed his head toward Michael. Jamie moved to stand beside Michael, a supernatural barrier between us and the bad guys. “Ms. Riley,” he said. I guessed that was Jamie.
And then the man leveled his watery gaze at me, and I shuddered reflexively.
“I don’t believe we’re acquainted,” he said, just before Sebastian leaned in and whispered something to him.
The man’s eyebrows lifted in interest.
My stomach fell, and I hunched a little closer to the table behind me. I was confident I did not want this guy interested in me.
“Aha,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “The girl who, shall we say, became closely acquainted with Mr. Born’s magic?”
I took a moment to glare at Sebastian, who I assumed had mentioned that he’d hit me with firespell during my fateful trip into the basement.
But more interesting was the look I got back from him. I expected disdain or irritation—the emotions on Alex’s face. But Sebastian looked almost . . . apologetic.
“I’m Jeremiah,” the older man said, drawing my attention away from Sebastian. “And I can’t tell you how interested I am to make your acquaintance. I hope you weren’t harmed?”
“I’m fine,” I gritted out, doubtful that he cared whether I’d been harmed or not. The lights above us flickered once, then twice. When Jeremiah’s eyes flicked with interest to the fixtures, I knew I had to tamp it down. I didn’t want him knowing that I was now an Adept, thanks to “Mr. Born’s magic,” and that I was now one of his enemies.
As if she understood the struggle, Scout squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and forced myself to stay calm.
Since Jeremiah was older than the Reapers around him, I assumed he was a leader, one of the self-centered asses who’d decided that taking the lifeblood of others was a cost worth paying to keep his own magic.
He looked from me to Michael and Jamie. “Your distraction was just that,” he said. “Merely a distraction. Next time, you might do a little more planning. But, since you’re here, what brings you to our little sanctuary?”
As if he didn’t know. “You kidnapped my friend,” I reminded him.
Jeremiah rolled his eyes as if bored by the accusation. “Kidnapping is a harsh word, Ms. Parker, although given the fact that you’ve undoubtedly been brainwashed by these agitators, these troublemakers, I’ll forgive the transgression. These children don’t understand the gifts they’ve been given. They reject their power. They turn away from it, and they blame us for accepting it. For abiding by the natural order. They cast us as demons.”
“The power corrupts,” Michael said. “We don’t reject it. We give it back.”
“And what do you have to show for that decision?” Alex asked. “A few years of magic until you’re normal again. Ordinary.”
“Healthy,” Michael said. “Helpers. Not parasites on the world.”
Jeremiah barked out a mirthless laugh. “How naïve, all of you.” He aimed his gaze at me. “I would hope, Ms. Parker, that you might spend some time thinking critically about your friends and whatever lies they told you. They are a boil on the face of magic. They imagine themselves to be saviors, rebels, a mutiny against tyranny. They are wrong. They create strife, division, amongst us when we need solidarity.”
“Solidarity to take lives?” I wondered aloud. “To take the strength of others?”
Jeremiah clucked his tongue. “It’s a pity that you’ve succumbed to their backward belief that the magic they’ve been given is inherently evil. That it is inherently bad. Those are ideas for the small-minded, for the ignorant, who do not understand or appreciate the gifts.”
“Those gifts degrade,” Jamie pointed out. “They rot you from the inside.”
“So you’ve been taught,” Jeremiah said, taking a step toward us. “But what if you’re wrong?”
“Wrong?” Scout asked hoarsely. “How could they be wrong?”
“You steal other peoples’ essences,” Michael said, pointing at Scout, “from people like her, in order to survive. Does that sound right to you?”
“What is right, Mr. Garcia? Is it right that you would be given powers of such magnitude—or in your case, knowledge of such magnitude—for such a short period of time? Between the ages of, what, fifteen and twenty-five? Does it seem natural to you that such power is intended to be temporary, or does that seem like a construct of shortsighted minds?”
I glanced over at Scout, who frowned as if working through the logic and wondering the same thing.
“We agree to give up their powers,” Jamie pointed out, “before they become a risk. A liability. Before we have to take from others.”
“A very interesting conclusion, Ms. Riley, but with a flawed center. Why should you protect humans who are not strong enough to take care of themselves? What advantage is there in stepping forward to protect those who are so obviously weak? Whose egos vastly outpace their abilities? Those who are gifted with magic are elite amongst humans.”
As if bored with the conversation, he waved a hand in the air. “Enough of this prattle. Are you willing to see the error of your ways? To come back to the fold? To leave behind those who would rip you from your true family?”
Reaper or cult leader? I wondered. It was hard to tell the difference with this one.
“Are you high?” Michael asked.
Jeremiah’s nostrils flared. “I’ll take that as a juvenile ‘no,’ ” he said, then turned on his heel. “Ad meloria. Finish them.”
21
“Aw, this is my favorite part,” said Alex, then outstretched her hands.
But before she could shake the earth, Jamie wound up her left hand as if bracing for a pitch. “Keep your issues,” she said, then slung her arm forward, “to yourself.” A wave of heat blew past us as pellets of white fire shot from Jamie’s hand like sparks from a sparkler.
“Holy frick,” I muttered, instinctively covering my head even though the fire wasn’t meant for me. But it was enough to temporarily subdue Alex, who drew back her hand and hit the ground, wrapping her arms around her head to avoid the burn.
“Help me off this thing,” Scout muttered, grasping my arm. I pulled her to her feet as Michael glanced around at the movement.
“Green,” he yelled over the crackle of falling sparks, “get behind the table!”
“Garcia,” Scout said, fingers biting into my hand as she kept herself upright, “I’m the spellbinder here. You get your ass behind the table.”
“They’re reloading,” Jamie said, turning to grab my arm. She pulled me behind the table, and I dragged Scout with me. “Let’s all get behind the table.”
We’d just managed to hit the deck when the pressure in the room changed. I knew what was coming, deep in my bones. I clapped my hands to my ears against the sudden ache, as if my blood and bones remembered it, feared it.
The air in the room vibrated, contracted, and expanded, and the light seemed to shift to apple green, the table suddenly flying above our heads with Sebastian’s burst of firespell. I covered Scout’s body with mine and we were both saved the impact, but the move stripped us of our cover. We were all but na**d, nothing but air between us and two Reapers who appeared to be better equipped for the battle than we were.