by D. N. Hoxa
His words fell like sacks full of rocks in the pit of my stomach. It hurt like hell because he was right.
I’d rushed, and nothing good ever comes from rushing. And now I was doing it again. Closing my eyes, I moved away from him and went to the window. I didn’t actually see anything outside if there even was anything to see, but I just needed a moment. As if sensing it, Kit climbed up on the back of my leg, squeaking weakly. “It’s okay,” I whispered to him, even though I knew it wasn’t.
“What’s the plan now?” Chris asked. He sounded a lot calmer.
“The plan is to sit and wait, see what we can find out about what the Guild knows,” Carter said.
“They’ve arrested thirty people—two of them ours,” Chris said. “The rest got away.”
Thirty people. That was plenty of people to prove the existence of the Uprising. They’d be questioned. They’d be spelled to tell the truth. I focused on that. It was the only good thing about this entire situation.
“Can you get them out?” Carter asked.
Chris hesitated. “I’m working on it.”
I turned to face them again. “Who’s going to go for my things? I need to talk to them.”
Carter raised his hand and waved for one of the guys standing by the doorway to approach us. His face was a complete blur when he stepped in front of me, but I’m pretty sure his eyes were blue—a baby blue, like a clear sky in spring-time.
“You’re going with him,” I told Kit, and he squeaked his confirmation. He’d need to go for his family, too.
I gave the man my keys, my address, and I told him where I hid the money. I felt defeated like never before. If he stole the money and ran, I wouldn’t even be surprised. I also told him to get my emergency backpack, one that I had kept in my closet since the day I’d arrived in New York. I’d always expected to be found by the Guild, but it still felt like a dream, a shock, a hallucination.
After he left with the other two guys, Chris, Carter and I went to sit down in the living room. At some point Carter put a glass in my hand and only when I tasted it did I realize that it was whiskey. The burn felt mighty good going down.
“They’ve got thirty people. At least one of them will tell the Guild the truth. That’s what we wanted,” Carter said, his elbows resting on his knees, his glass between his hands, knuckles white. He was squeezing it so tightly I was surprised it hadn’t broken yet.
“Except if they set the trap for us, the Uprising saw that coming, too,” Chris said.
Another sack of rocks stuck in my throat. I chased it down with more whiskey.
“But it doesn’t matter. It’s thirty people. They can’t control all of them, especially if the Guild is serious about extracting information from them,” Carter said.
All I saw was Damian—his pale face, his burning eyes. They’re stronger than I thought, Sinea. They’ve got roots in the Guild. They’ll be coming for you. And like a fool, I didn’t even believe him.
The Uprising had people in the Guild. Who was to say that they wouldn’t use them for this?
The need to call him came over me again, but I gritted my teeth. My mess. My problem. I didn’t need more of those.
I stood up. “I need to sleep,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My brain was blocked. I needed rest before I could come up with a plan that wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass tomorrow.
“Sure. I’ll show you to the guest room,” Carter said while Chris sighed. He wanted to say something. He didn’t. I followed Carter out the doorway.
Chapter Nine
When I heard the knock on the door, my whole body shook like I was being electrocuted, even though I’d been asleep. I jumped to my feet, completely disoriented. The room I was in was foreign to me. Dark grey curtains covered half of the window, which showed that the sun was already up. A queen-sized bed with baby blue sheets I’d been sleeping in. A nightstand with a lamp on it and a TV mounted on the wall, a mess of cables coming from behind it like a tail. Kit woke up lazily—he’d been sleeping next to me on the pillow, and when he did, the blanket moved, revealing whom I thought was Milky, still asleep. I leaned down, still unable to make out any of my thoughts, and pulled the blanket down all the way. Yep. Dalia and the five little hellbeasts were all in bed, sleeping right next to me.
Another knock.
My heart leapt so fast, it made me nauseous. I had no idea what I was wearing or how my face and hair looked, but I went and opened the door anyway. When Malin and Jamie practically wrestled me back to the bed, I started to remember exactly what had happened, and where I was. How I’d ended up here. My heart sank.
What the hell were the girls doing here?
“By the goddess, Sin, you scared us shitless!” Malin cried as she hugged half of me, then leaned back and pushed my hair away from my face.
“Yeah, you piece of shit! Why the hell didn’t you call?” Jamie said through gritted teeth, stepping away with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were smiling eyes ninety percent of the time, but right now, they weren’t smiling. They were very angry eyes.
“I-I-I…” I couldn’t even find the words to speak.
“What the hell happened?”
“How did they even pull that off?”
“Was it Amina? That bitch!”
“Were you hurt? Let me look at you.”
And, again: “What the hell happened?”
I looked behind me on the bed to see only Kit sitting on the pillow. The little ones and Dalia were nowhere to be seen. I sat down with a sigh. I’d just woken up and I already felt tired. The girls sat with me, but they continued to look at me like they were expecting me to turn to a ghost any second. Uma, Jamie’s familiar, meowed softly as she sat by her feet.
“Nothing happened. We went there thinking Amina and the fae would show up. Instead, they sent their minions and then the Guild came. They…they saw.” Me. Using all of my magic, and a possibly illegal spell. “Now my signature is all over that place and it’s just a matter of time.”
“Fucking shit,” Jamie whispered.
“That’s fine. We can do something about that. We can alter the results, can’t we? There’s a spell…” Malin’s voice trailed off and she jumped to her feet. “I need to call Robbie.”
“No, Mal, stop.” I grabbed her by the hand when she turned for the door. “You are not going to get involved in this mess.” She was a necromancer. The Guild nulled necromancers when they were children, but I’d taken the Nulling off her just over a month ago. If the Guild found out, she’d be imprisoned for life. I could never live with that.
“I’m not going to get involved, I’ll just—”
“You’re not going to involve Robbie in this mess, either.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish out of water. Then, she sat down.
“Listen, I’m going to be fine.” I pointed at my black backpack that was resting against the nightstand. I hadn’t heard anybody bring it in the night before—or Kit coming in with his family for that matter. I must have gone out cold the second I hit the pillow. And I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
But the backpack was there, which meant it had all gone well. The Guild hadn’t been at my apartment yet.
“I’ve got everything I need in there. I’m just going to disappear for a while, lay low until things calm down. Then I’m going to make a plan.”
“Fuck that.” This from Malin, which surprised both Jamie and me. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re not going to live on the run.”
“I have to.” I’d thought about this exact moment more times than I could remember, ever since I was a teenager. I knew the day would come, and now that it had, I was going to handle it. I’d slept, I’d rested, my mind was clearer. What had already happened the night before was out of my control now, but I could control how things went from now on. That’s exactly what I planned to do.
“No, you don’t. We’ll see what the Guild knows first. There’s a chance that th
ey didn’t even pick up your signal. There was a lot of magic used in that place, right?” Jamie said.
“On whom did you use your Talent?” Malin asked.
“I didn’t use my Talent.” Oh, boy, I thought. Here it goes again.
“So why are you worried? They can’t pick up your Talent from your spells alone,” Malin reminded me, a smile already stretching her full lips.
“Because it’s a lot of magic and an illegal spell.” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that, but I doubted anything so powerful could be deemed legal by the Sacri Guild.
“So? People use a lot of magic and illegal spells all the time,” said Jamie. “This is fine. It’s fine—we’re going to get through this.” And I loved her for saying this.
“Remember that I lied to you my whole life?”
Their brows shot up at the same time. “Yes?”
“Well, I lied to you about something else, too.” They were speechless—I waited a whole ten seconds for them to say something, but they didn’t, so I continued. “When I grabbed that amulet, and it knocked me out? I didn’t just become more powerful. I became what they apparently call an Alpha Prime—a Level Five magic wielder.”
Sweat on my forehead already. My palms were sticky. As if he could feel it, Kit climbed on my shoulder and wrapped his tail around the back of my neck to comfort me. He’d gotten so sensitive ever since his family had joined us in the apartment.
“There’s no such thing as a Level Five magic wielder,” Jamie said, a confused look in her wide eyes.
“There is.” I was sitting right between them.
“But you returned the magic,” Malin reminded me. “You returned the magic to the amulet that night, right?”
“I did but it made no difference. I’m still…I’m still an Alpha Prime.”
Silence. Loaded, heavy silence, coating the air, invading my lungs.
“So that’s why your fingers glow,” Malin said in wonder.
“And that’s why you knocked us all out that night like that,” said Jamie.
“That’s exactly what I did last night, too. That’s what the Guild saw.”
They didn’t need to say it—I could see it written all over their faces. They, too, thought I was screwed now. They would have no objection about me living on the run anymore.
“By the goddess, Sin,” Malin said and hugged me.
“You’re a bitch, you know that? Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” Jamie said. She wasn’t as easily forgiving as Malin.
“Because I didn’t know. I only found out that night when I was going to talk to Damian, and then…I don’t know. I was freaked out.” More than freaked out, but I didn’t have the words to tell them how it felt.
“You poor thing,” Malin cooed.
“Anything else you want to share, maybe? What are you, from Mars or something? Because at this point I’m willing to believe anything,” Jamie said.
Despite everything, I still smiled.
“Actually, there is something,” I said and cleared my throat. “Kit’s family is here.” Kit squeaked softly. There was no complaint in his voice though. “They were actually sleeping on the bed with me when you walked in.”
“Really? So where are they?” Malin said.
I nudged Kit with my head. He squeaked once more, louder this time, and the next second, something moved by my feet. Before I knew it, five little hellbeasts were climbing up my legs from under the bed so fast I could barely see them, and Dalia was standing on the floor, looking up at them.
Screams filled my ears. Malin and Jamie jumped to their feet and went all the way to the door. Kit was shaking on my shoulder. He was laughing, the little fucker. And I was, too. Just a little. The little ones had already started playing with my fingers, stabbing my skin.
“Hey, don’t do that,” I told Bear as he poked his cute little skinny leg in my index finger. “It’s fine, guys. These are Kit’s little ones, and that’s Dalia, his mate.”
“By the god, Sin. By the god,” Jamie breathed, both hands to her chest as she looked at my lap. Kit couldn’t stop laughing.
“What are those things? How…what…” Malin couldn’t even speak properly.
The little ones weren’t that scary. They were just…yeah, okay, they were scary. Like mutated spiders with three red eyes and really sharp teeth. I wasn’t going to hold it against my friends for freaking out.
“You just need to get to know them. They’re actually really cute, I swear. They’re—ow! Hey, watch it, Mustache!” He practically stuck his leg between my nail and my flesh! It burned like hell.
“Cute? Are you serious?!” Jamie cried.
“It’s Kit’s little ones, guys. You don’t have to be afraid. They’re not going to bite you.” Well, I didn’t know that for sure, but neither did they, right? “Just come sit down.”
They did. It took a while but they eventually came and sat down on the bed, keeping a good distance from me, and they watched the little hellbeasts playing on my lap, climbing up my arms, then down again. Dalia stayed put in front of me, and she just watched them. The expression on her scary face was a cross between bored and concerned.
“Don’t let them come near me,” Jamie said with a flinch while I checked my phone under the pillow. It was eight a.m. already. No missed calls or unread texts.
I rolled my eyes. “I need you to leave now. Carter’s downstairs, right?” It was easy to guess that he’d told the girls how to even get here, and he’d let them up.
“Yeah, he called us. He’s a really great guy, Sin,” Malin said.
“Yep. And hot. Let’s not forget hot.” Jamie still couldn’t look away from the hellbeasts on my lap. They were starting to get bored with my fingers now.
“He can probably hear you,” I reminded them. We were in his house. Well, his brother’s, but he was a werewolf. They could hear through walls perfectly.
“So? It’s a fact,” Jamie said with a shrug.
“Are you leaving with him?” Malin asked.
“No!” I said, way too fast. “No, of course not. I’m not going to drag anybody into this mess with me. I might have to wait for nightfall, just to see what they can find out about what the Guild knows, but after that, I’m gone.”
They both nodded but neither looked excited. “So what’s the plan? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’m thinking about renting a car, or maybe just buying a bus ticket. I don’t plan to stop moving for a couple of months. You know, just until things calm down.”
Malin suddenly looked shocked. “You plan to be away a couple of months?”
I flinched. “Yeah. I’m gonna need something from you, guys.” It hadn’t even occurred to me until then, but when I thought about it, it was the perfect idea. “I need you to go pay Sonny a visit at the Academy, and tell him what happened. I want to go see him myself, but the Guild will probably keep an eye on him, too.”
“Yes, of course. Not a problem,” Jamie said. “But you’ll call, right?”
“Of course.” I’d just need to figure out a way to do it without falling into the Guild’s radar. If being an Alpha Prime was as big of a deal as that book I read in the Shade Library said, then it was safe to assume that the Guild would stop at nothing to get to me. I’d just have to make sure to do whatever it took not to let that happen.
“What about…Damian?” Malin asked, saying his name in a whisper as if she knew exactly what it did to me.
My stomach twisted and turned. I bit my tongue for a second to gain control of my emotions. “Nothing. I’m not going to call him.”
“Yeah, why would she? He disappeared without a word on her twice now.” Jamie held up two fingers. “It’s his fault Sin is in this mess in the first place.”
But it wasn’t. “That’s not true, but either way, it doesn’t matter. If he comes to you, just tell him the truth. That I left and that I don’t know when I’ll be back.” If I ever would. My stomach turned again.
“
What about your job? What about Lucas and Kyle? And what about Carter? Is he in trouble, too?” Malin asked.
Shit, I hadn’t even thought about Lucas and Kyle. “They’ll be fine, I guess. And I’m not sure how much the Guild knows. I still have to talk to Carter.”
“Well, now’s as good a time as any,” said Jamie and stood up. “C’mon, let’s go talk to him.”
“You don’t have to stay, guys. I’m fine here.” I wasn’t fine. My skin was crawling, and it had nothing to do with the tiny beasts climbing up my legs while we walked toward the door. “What are you doing?” I asked them, as they hung onto my clothes, all over my torso. When they didn’t answer, I turned to Kit on my shoulder. “What are they doing, Kit?” But he had nothing to say, not even a little squeak. I could shake them off me, but their little bodies were really warm. It was a bit comforting, and since I wasn’t trying to hide here…oh, well. I could handle six hellbeasts on my person. At least Dalia stuck to the floor and just walked behind me.
“I’m going to throw up,” Jamie said as we walked down the stairs, a hand over her mouth. Uma agreed with a loud meow.
“They’re actually not that bad. Who’s this little guy?” Malin asked, pointing at the beast hanging by my elbow.
“That’s DaVinci. He loves messing up walls. I think he’s going to be an artist when he grows up.”
Malin laughed and reached out her finger to touch him, and DaVinci snapped his teeth at her. With a scream, she took her hand back. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing.
We could hear the sound of voices coming from the living room, where I’d been the night before, so that’s where we went. The room looked even bigger now that sunlight poured into it through the two massive windows across from me. Inside, there was Carter, Chris, that woman I’d met before—Tanya was her name—and another guy I didn’t recognize.
And they all froze completely when they saw us.
It took me a second to realize why. They’d smelled us even before we’d left the room, so the only reason for them to look so surprised was the little ones. The little hellbeasts hanging onto my clothes, and then Dalia standing next to my left foot, looking at them—now that surprised the shit out of them.
