The sizzle of bacon hitting the pan made me smile, and then the salt and maple aromas were joined by the rich, almost chocolate scent of fresh-brewed coffee.
I knew I should get out of bed. If not to set the table, maybe to harass Zay while he cooked. But the bed felt too good to leave behind. Just five minutes more of blankets and bliss.
I woke to the sound of my front door opening.
We weren’t expecting anyone. Maybe Shame had decided to drop in. I heard voices. Two. Zay and a man I couldn’t quite place. My landlord?
I got out of bed and put my robe on over my shorts and tank. I strolled into the living room. Zay stood in the middle of the room, his back toward me, hands up and out to the side.
It was not my landlord who had walked into my apartment.
It was Dane Lanister, Sedra’s bodyguard. He was not a handsome man, his eyes too close together in his long, squared-off face, his lips too thin, but he had that thief or professional hit man way of fading into the crowd. His clothes were indistinct—slacks and a gray jacket—and even though he was a member of the Authority, he’d been absent since before we fought the Veiled. I’d last seen him during the wild-magic storm when Jingo Jingo, my ex-Death magic teacher and current Authority betrayer, had kidnapped Sedra.
The gun in his hand was new too.
He lifted the gun and aimed it at both of us.
“Don’t move, don’t cast magic, and don’t make a sound, or I will kill you both.”
Magic is fast. Bullets are faster. And neither Zay nor I was in any shape to dodge bullets.
I held very still, the thump of my own heartbeat in my ears so loud, I almost couldn’t hear Dane over the noise of it. How had he gotten in? I realized it wouldn’t have been hard. Last I knew, last Zay knew, Dane was a good guy. One of the people in the Authority who was trying to make sure magic was safe for everyone. There was no reason to suspect he would want to point a gun at us.
“We are going to do this quietly,” he said. “Very quietly.”
He stepped into the room, and two other men, one who looked like he wrestled in the heavyweight division and another, shorter man who looked like he could take him, followed behind. I didn’t know them, or at least I didn’t think I did. They shut the door, and it made no sound. Mute spells. They were using magic to make sure no one above or below us heard what was happening.
“I have business with you, Allison,” Dane said. “Something I should have finished months ago. Don’t,” he said to Zay, who had opened his mouth and inhaled, “or I will shoot her between the eyes this time.”
This time? My stomach twisted, and I wanted to vomit. I didn’t know what other time he was talking about, but I had two bullet scars I didn’t remember receiving. And even though I had no memory of him shooting me, my body—my adrenaline—made it clear he was responsible for at least one of my scars.
Zay did not move, did not twitch a muscle, did not cast magic, did not say a thing.
I tried to pick up the pieces of my brain, to think of what I could do to stop this so we didn’t wind up dead. What weapons did I have? Magic. But I’d have to move to use it, and then I’d be dead.
I knew Zayvion was going over the possibilities too. I wasn’t touching him, so I had no idea what he was thinking. We couldn’t read each other’s minds enough for this to be a coordinated effort.
The two men strode across the room, smiling and silent, straight toward Zayvion. Without breaking stride, they both flicked their fingers, releasing an Illusion they’d been holding. I could hear more people behind us, maybe two—no, three.
They’d used Illusion to give them time to spread out into the room. Illusion so well cast, I couldn’t smell the magic they were using for it. There could be an army of people in the room right now, with guns, knives, and swords at our backs.
My skin crawled. It was everything I could do not to turn and look, but Dane’s gun was unwavering. Soft footsteps scuffled across the carpet. I counted up to six intruders in the room. Two in front closing in fast on Zayvion, maybe three behind doing the same, and Dane, still just on this side of the closed door, the barrel of his gun steady, his finger on the trigger.
They hit Zayvion from behind. The Mute spell made sure I didn’t hear what they hit him with. It might have been magic. It might have been a crowbar. He grunted and crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Eyes on me, Beckstrom.”
I did as he said, trying to see with my peripheral vision what they were doing to Zayvion. No luck.
“What do you want?” I asked.
I heard the ratchet of handcuffs opening, and then Zay was dragged to the far corner of my living room, toward the radiator.
I chanced a look over my shoulder.
“Your attention, Allison,” Dane said calmly, far too calmly, “or I will shoot you. You don’t have to be standing for what I want out of you.”
Zay was bleeding, out cold. Five men, not four, were handcuffing, gagging, and blindfolding him. They all had guns too. I heard the meaty thump of a boot slamming into muscle. Probably ribs. I hoped it was just ribs.
I turned back to Dane. Furious. I didn’t know how, but I was going to take him down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Do you even know what will happen to you when the Authority finds out about this?” Buying time, really. I didn’t care what he thought was going to happen. I needed a minute to figure out what I could do to him and his five friends without hurting Zay. In theory, I could call on enough magic to burn this place to the ground. I had enough magic at my fingertips, even without the small magic I’d sacrificed in death, to do it. But I’d have to pay just as big a price as the spell I cast, and then I’d be nothing but ashes and burnt bones.
I didn’t have any weapons—which scared the hell out of me, and that, in turn, only made me angrier.
I was good at angry.
He motioned with the gun. “Now that Zayvion is out of the way, you have two choices. Do what I tell you to do, or bleed.”
If I lifted my hand to cast magic, I’d be on the ground bleeding. And I did not want to fall to the floor with six angry, armed men in the room.
“All right,” I said. “What do you want?”
Dad? I thought. I knew he was still there, still in my mind. But he had been silent for three days. Either he was too weak to help, or he was hiding from Dane. I didn’t think Dane knew my dad was in my head.
No, he had to know. I’d been trying to convince everyone in the Authority for months now that my dad was in my head. Great.
“You are a problem,” Dane said. “And the easiest way to get rid of a problem is to kill it. Simple, efficient, gone. A gun to the back of the head, a knife through the spine, magic to boil your blood, crush your skull, stop your heart. The kind of death we gave your father, Greyson and I. The kind of death I will give you. But first, I want to know where Daniel is keeping Sedra.”
Holy crap. I knew Greyson was a part of my dad’s murder, along with James Hoskil, but I did not know who else had been involved—had no idea Dane had been involved.
“My dad’s dead,” I said, anger steadying my voice. “He’s not keeping Sedra anywhere. Jingo Jingo has her.”
“A technicality. Jingo is working for your father. Carrying out what I admit is a very comprehensive plan to hold Sedra hostage and use her as sacrifice to bring Mikhail back into power. I don’t know what Daniel intends to get out of that. And I don’t care. Tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. Dad never told me his plans.”
“Oh, he told you. You may not remember it.” He paced toward me. “Daniel was paranoid about how much information any one person should be allowed to access. But not you. He told everything to you. You just don’t remember.”
He stopped. Not close enough for me to make a grab for his gun, but close enough that I could smell the old-vitamin stink of him. One sniff and a wash of fear rolled through me. I remembered that smell. That smell meant pain. Even though I
was furious, a whimper filled my throat.
“The information, your father’s information, is in your head,” he said with a tight smile. “All I have to do is pull it out of you.”
The men behind me were moving. I couldn’t hear them, but I felt their footsteps vibrating beneath my bare feet, coming closer.
“Your father Closed you many times. Used you. He’s been taking your memories away since the accident when you were five years old.”
A high ringing started in my ears; my heartbeat thrummed behind it. I was breathing too fast. I didn’t know if I was angry, panicked, or about to be sick. I didn’t remember an accident. I didn’t remember my dad Closing me.
That didn’t mean those things hadn’t happened.
He had to be lying. He had to be trying to knock me off my footing, to break me down so he could get me to tell him where Sedra was.
I didn’t want to believe the bastard, but I knew, somehow I knew, every word was the truth.
His eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t know, did you?” He shook his head. “He never even trusted you with that much. Isn’t that sad? And now he’s in there, isn’t he? Filling up the holes in you he’s been making for himself all these years. Taking up the room he’s carved out in you.”
“I told you I don’t know where Sedra is,” I said. “We’re all looking for her. If you’d been here the past few weeks, you’d know that. Where have you been? Why haven’t you been helping us look for her?”
“I know who my allies are,” he snapped. He lifted the gun slightly, aiming at my head. Then, in a voice clipped with anger: “Tell your father I want to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t listen to me.” Still buying time. Did his men have a gun to Zay’s head? If I tried magic, would they just shoot us both? It might be worth a bullet to take Dane and his men down. But no matter how good the doctors in the Authority were, a bullet to the brain was a bad day that couldn’t be undone.
Dane knew I carried magic inside me. Dane knew I could use it. Dane might even know that I’d given away my small magic in death in trade for Zayvion’s soul.
What Dane did not know was what I’d gotten out of that deal. I had a mark of death on my hand. I carried a piece of death in my palm. That piece of death was a mark Pike said the dead were drawn to like a beacon.
Maybe it was time I used the dead to my advantage.
“I never admired your father, Allison,” Dane said. “But I appreciated his approach to problem solving. He and I are in agreement there. Use, discard, destroy. Then there are no errors, no mistakes, no tracks to cover. Once he realizes what I’m willing to do to you, to get to him, he’ll answer me.”
“He doesn’t care,” I said. “He’s never cared if I was hurt.”
He shook his head again. Smiled. “Ask him if he had a plan in place for this. For me killing you today.” He lowered the gun, level with my chest.
I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. Sweat trickled down my spine and between my breasts. Even though I was shaking cold, my mind finally went hard, crystal clear.
I was not getting out of this alive.
Fine. Then neither was he.
“Daniel. Where. Is. Sedra?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He flicked the gun to my left. The crack of an explosion was swallowed by the Mute spell.
I screamed—my voice whisked away by the Mute spell his men were holding—and stumbled backward, catching at my arm. Ice and pain and heat coursed up my left arm, puncturing my heart with metal hooks. My arm was on fire. Blood gushed and ran hot down my skin, dripped to the floor. He’d shot me. Not my shoulder, but the outside of my biceps. I wanted to scream again, instead used my breath to inhale.
“That is to let you know I am serious about this, Daniel. Next will be her stomach. Then I’ll put a bullet through her brain and be rid of you both. If you want your daughter to survive, tell me. Where. Is. Sedra?”
Dad shifted in my mind. I pushed against him. If he got control and started swapping secrets with Dane, I’d be used, discarded, dead.
The pain throbbed with my heartbeat. My bathrobe sleeve was soggy with blood.
Allison. Dad sounded angry. Yeah, well, join the club. Let me unlock the mark in your hand.
I didn’t want an unlocking. I wanted a gun.
“Still aren’t sure?” Dane said. “Let us jog your memory.”
One of his buddies slammed a fist into my left kidney. Pain gushed across my nerves, my spine, stabbing up into my brain. I yelled, and my knees hit the floor, sending out another wave of pain.
“Enough!” Dad and I said at the same time.
I was in too much pain to know which of us was speaking. My anger and his anger formed a hot, rolling power gathering inside me. My hatred and his hatred were the same.
For perhaps the first time in my life, my dad and I were on the exact same page.
Options washed through my mind. I don’t know if I sorted them or if he did. It was instant, clear, easy.
Death magic. He wouldn’t know I had a mark, a seal, a seed of Death magic planted in my left palm.
“I’ll tell you where Sedra is,” we said.
Dane didn’t move, didn’t offer me a hand up. Smart.
I pushed myself up with my right hand, my left hanging at my side. I wavered a little on my feet, shock and pain sucking at my bones—could be loss of blood too, come to think of it, but still, I stood. I glanced at Zay. Dane’s men did not have their guns drawn.
How very stupid of them.
Can you move your left hand? Dad asked.
No.
This will hurt. It almost sounded like an apology.
I don’t give a damn.
“Jingo has her,” we said. “He hasn’t contacted me. If I hadn’t been delayed fighting the Veiled, I would have seen to him, and Sedra, by now.”
“I don’t believe you.” Dane aimed the gun at my stomach.
Dad and I said one word that made my lips sting. He, I, we, hauled magic up through the network lines around the apartment. So much, so fast, the lights dimmed.
The world became very, very slow.
Black flame covered my left hand, cool, slick, soft as silk. I threw the fire at him—holy hells, that hurt—while we drew another spell with my right hand. It was a type of Hold or Freeze, something I’d never used before, but Dad’s steel-hard confidence guided my fingers through the glyph.
We spoke another word and unleashed the spell. It wrapped around the other men in the room. I didn’t take the time to look at them but knew, as my father knew, that the men dropped unconscious to the floor, their air cut off by the spell.
Dane was our problem. Dane was our target. Dane was going to die. That made both my father and me very, very pleased.
His eyes were wide. He squeezed the trigger. I was already moving.
The bullet would hit me in the chest. I threw myself to the right, no time to cast another spell as I tucked. The bullet hit my left hip, and pain poured screaming hot through me.
Dad, however, kept his focus clear. He was already casting another spell.
Dane didn’t have a chance to get off the next shot.
The Shield he’d been tracing shattered under Dad’s Impact spell. Lightning crackled across the ceiling, burned paint and plaster, arced, and struck him in the chest.
Dane yelled. The Mute spell was gone. I figured they heard that yell three blocks down.
Son of a bitch, Dad said. He has a disk—
Light exploded. Dane and his men were gone.
Black ashes, as glossy as raven feathers, fell in a circle around me, making a mess of my carpet.
Everything snapped back to real time. I dropped my hands, the spells gone, broken. My heartbeat still hammered as I gasped for air. I hurt from head to toe and at the same time was numb and trembling. My pulse thudded hard, heavy, slow beats, while the ringing in my ears seemed to be coming from a thousand miles away.
I turned toward Zay and shuffled acr
oss the room. I wasn’t thinking very straight. I sat next to him, hissing at the pain in my hip, and stared at the handcuffs, wondering how I was going to get those off him.
I stood, which hurt, and looked for something to help.
Cell phone, Dad said.
I didn’t know how that would help with the handcuffs, but right now any idea was better than wandering around like a zombie. What was wrong with me?
My cell was by my computer, in the other corner of the room. I walked until I got there, picked up the phone, and stared at it.
Somehow my fingers hit the speed dial. Somehow my hand put the phone to my ear.
Then there was a voice on the other end. Victor’s voice.
“This is Daniel,” I said. Well, he said. “Allie’s been shot; Zayvion is unconscious. Dane Lanister was behind it. We are at her apartment and could use Dr. Fisher’s assistance.”
Not a pause, not a doubt. “We’ll be right there.”
My thumb turned the phone off, and, with Dad’s help, I sat down by Zayvion again, but mostly on my uninjured hip, and this time holding my good hand over the wound on my arm.
I have you, Dad said. Rest.
And hell, who was I to argue with the man?
I rested. I might have blacked out, but I heard the sounds of traffic outside my window and was acutely aware of Zayvion’s breathing. When my front door opened, I was very much awake.
Victor, who looked like a corporate exec who’d been interrupted in the middle of an important meeting, strode through the doorway. Behind him was Dr. Fisher, wearing her usual casual sweater, slacks, and sensible shoes, her hair in one braid down her back. Shame and Terric were there too, Shame in black from head to toe, Terric wearing a blue Seahawks T-shirt and jeans. They didn’t look happy.
I smiled. “ ’Bout time you got here.”
Victor cast a very nice cleansing spell, something to negate any lingering magic and trip any spell traps; then Dr. Fisher was across the room before I could blink.
“Handcuffs,” she said.
Shame pulled out his key chain, and then he was right next to me, unlocking the cuffs and gently pulling Zay’s hands off the radiator.