The Reluctant Assassin Boxset

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "Petri, get up. I know you've been listening. This is Zayn. You'll be staying with him this year," said Amber, jabbing her thumb in Zayn's direction.

  Petri slipped her headphones around her neck, glaring at Amber as if she would rather put daggers into her own ears rather than listen to another word. She rose from the couch like an apparition and immediately went out the front door.

  Zayn ran after her, finding her standing on the edge of the street, glaring at the passing cars as if she could crumple them in her fist.

  "Do you have any gear? Clothes we need to grab first?" asked Zayn, motioning towards the shop behind them.

  She patted an olive green shoulder bag as an answer.

  "Great, well at least we don't have to haul luggage across the city. Look, we're going to have to get a move on. I have to be at class in thirty minutes, but first I have to swing by the house and drop you off. It's in the seventh ward."

  He started walking in that direction, expecting that Petri would follow. He made it a dozen strides before he realized she wasn't with him.

  Zayn spun around. "Hey, Petri. This way."

  She was still standing on the edge of the sidewalk, nearly getting hit when a white Buick with tinted windows pulled up to the Prestige Hotel next door to Amber's shop. An elderly gentleman got out, pulled luggage out of the trunk, and prepared to put his keys into his pocket, but Petri snatched them out of his hand, and before Zayn could do anything to stop her, she got into the Buick and drove away.

  "Thief!" yelled the old man after the girl.

  Zayn felt his whole face go numb at the realization of what she'd just done.

  The old man fumbled with his cell phone as he hurried to call the police. The white Buick turned right at the next block up. Zayn flooded his imbuement and took off after the stolen car.

  Chapter Eleven

  City of Invictus, November 2015

  Neat-o roomies

  When they'd received their imbuements, Instructors Allgood and Pennywhistle had been clear that they were not to make their use an obvious display, reminding them of the word "Subtle" in the Hall's title. Battles, whether they were physical, magical, or political, were easier to win if your opponent underestimated your abilities. Braggadocios and trash talkers usually ended up dead or had their innards turned to bug guts in their line of work.

  So it was uncomfortable for Zayn as he sprinted past the gawking onlookers, leaping cars when the No Walk sign was lit, and generally, treated the city streets like a game of speed parkour. His only solace was that he was moving so fast it was unlikely that anyone would notice who he was, and in the city of sorcery, people dismissed displays of supernatural abilities fairly quickly.

  Still, he could imagine the cuff upside his head if Allgood found out, not to mention the trouble he'd be in for getting mixed up with the felonious niece of a powerful witch, or whatever Amber was.

  Two blocks up, Zayn spotted the white Buick turning left. He dodged into rush hour traffic, fully expecting to get pulverized as he zipped in and out of the cars. A delivery truck switched lanes, and Zayn had to freeze on the white line, or get smashed.

  In that moment of stillness, his legs reminded him that all the faez in the world didn't make his muscles supernatural, as they burned with the effort of running flat out for blocks and blocks.

  But he had to catch up to Petri in her stolen car, or...or…he didn't even want to think about it. Zayn took big breath and sprinted into an opening in the crossing traffic. He made it across the street and leapt a trashcan when a lady in a wide blue hat walking a Malamute exited a pet shop right into his way.

  The Buick was stopped two blocks ahead at a stoplight. Zayn pushed his imbuement so he could reach it before the light turned green. He was half a block away when the light changed, and before he could reach her door, she sped away.

  This time, the street traffic was in Petri's favor, and the Buick slipped into the distance. Before long, he had no idea where the car, or he, was.

  "This is not good," he said, trying to calm his breath after running straight out for a good five minutes. He had his hands on his head to catch his breath, and he was glistening in sweat.

  He checked the time. He was going to be late for class, and there was no way to find her.

  "Why did I agree to this?" He shook his head. "Giving a dragon a sponge bath doesn't sound so bad right now."

  A dark-skinned businessman gave Zayn a funny look as he walked past.

  "How do I find her? She could be anywhere." He spun around. "Where am I even at?"

  The crowded sidewalks were filled with men and women in expensive business clothes, accented with minor trinkets like weather-resistant cuff links, or wind-perfect earrings. The gleaming office buildings smelled like money and power, or as he stood like an island in the sea of people, expensive colognes and perfumes.

  A quick check on his cell phone map showed him he was in the third ward. The Spire was on his left, its top mixing with the streaking white clouds of the sky.

  There was no way to find Petri, not without some spell components and a little space for rune lines. He might as well head home. He'd already missed most of Konig's class.

  But when he took a step, the effects of the mad sprint across the city caught up with him, and his legs started shaking. His skin had stopped sweating, and his mouth felt like a desert.

  Zayn found an upscale store called Excelsior Market to purchase a rejuvenating sports drink. He was standing in the aisle when an older lady who'd clearly had a lot of anti-wrinkle enchantments and was wearing expensive workout clothes pointed into the cooler.

  "You have to get the cherry Mage Blaster," she said with a Spanish accent. "I always have one after gargoyle yoga, and it makes me feel like I'm forty again."

  She grabbed a bright red bottle of Mage Blaster, winked as she passed him, and disappeared into the front of the store. Zayn shrugged and grabbed one himself.

  The price was shocking. More than a night out at the bars, but he knew he shouldn't have been surprised given the area. He wasn't disappointed when the red liquid hit his lips—it was salty sweet, and his legs stopped shaking right away. He checked the ingredients, but there were none listed. Given that it was a D'Agastine product, he probably didn't want to know.

  After he'd downed half the Mage Blaster, Zayn found the Green Line, which took him to the outer ring, where he switched to the Blue and rode it until he reached the station nearest his house in the seventh ward.

  The white Buick with tinted windows was sitting out front of his house. Whatever exhaustion he'd had was replaced with rage. He saw Petri inside the house, talking with his teammates, who'd clearly just gotten back from class.

  Why the hell did they let her in?

  He marched to the door, disarmed the guardian with a series of complex gestures, and went inside. Everyone's head turned towards him. His teammates looked like they were trying to make sense of Petri's story.

  "What are you doing?" he asked, rage catching in his throat.

  The smudged mascara had been washed away, revealing her high cheekbones and dark mysterious eyes. If he weren't so furious, he would have found her extremely attractive.

  "Meeting your friend," said Keelan, with an eyebrow raised. "Where were you during class? Instructor Konig is pissed. Well, I mean, he never really showed any emotion, but he did assign you a pile of makeup work, which I’m sure is going to keep you up all night."

  "I was...why did you…" Zayn was about to say steal that car, but he realized that would not help his explanation regarding why she had to stay with them. "Why didn't you wait for me?"

  "You said you had to get to class, so I came here. I waited until your roommates got home and introduced myself," said Petri.

  The sweetness in her voice, the calm surety as if she'd done nothing wrong, completely knocked Zayn from his anger. She'd stolen a car, so easily and brazenly, and then beat him home—a place he'd not told her where he was headed—and calmly introduced he
rself to his teammates. The idea of giving a dragon a sponge bath was sounding better by the second.

  "How did you know where I live?" he asked.

  Petri rolled her eyes, giving a petulant half-shrug. "Aunt Amber told me, silly."

  The others had been treating her kindly, but seemed ready for a real explanation.

  "Petri, can I speak to my team for a sec? Since your aunt kinda sprung this on me, I haven't had a chance to tell them," said Zayn.

  "Sure thing," she said. "I'll go grab my stuff out of the car."

  As soon as she left, their polite moods turned serious. Portia was first to tear into him.

  "Agreed to take a roommate? Are you completely insane?"

  Zayn put his hands out as if he were trying to stop a herd of stampeding wildebeests.

  "I get it, all of it. You are all free to rip me a new one over this, but I promise you I didn't have a choice. I was bound, and I don't mean pinky swears, to this favor from her aunt," said Zayn.

  Keelan wrinkled his forehead. "Is this the Amber that let you speak to Katie after she was dead?"

  "The very one," said Zayn. "She has a strong 'Don't cross me' vibe, like more than I had when facing down those maetrie."

  "You should have told us you'd promised her a favor," said Skylar.

  "It never crossed my mind that it would be something that would impact the team. I was thinking I'd have to retrieve a stolen artifact, or wrestle a zombie bear, something normal. Not babysit her niece for the year," said Zayn.

  "She's hardly a baby," said Portia, very speculatively.

  "No," said Zayn, shaking his head. "She's off-limits. I have to protect her and show her the town. Amber wanted Petri to have friends her age. While she's here, you should treat her like another member of the team."

  "Yeah, about that," said Keelan. "There's a lot of private stuff that goes on here—our plans for the maetrie, Instructor Minoan could show up at any moment, the normal trouble we get into around here. Is this really a good place, or a safe place for her?"

  "Amber read my fortune. She knows what kind of life I lead, what kind of trouble we get into, probably more than I do. While Petri doesn't give me the off-the-charts power feel that Amber does, I assume that she's not a frail little flower who needs to be coddled. I'm taking Amber at her word—show Petri the city, be her friend."

  Try to keep her from stealing any more cars, he thought.

  "Just tell me one thing," said Vin. "If we say no, what happens to you?"

  "Bad things, I imagine," said Zayn.

  Vin shrugged. "Okay, it's settled then. We're a team. Your problems are our problems."

  The others nodded their agreement. Zayn shook his head.

  "I don't deserve you. You guys are the best," said Zayn.

  "This, our fearless leader, is very true," said Vin, patting him on the shoulder.

  "Hey," said Skylar. "Maybe this will end up being a lot of fun. She's our age, seems a little supernatural. What could go wrong?"

  Zayn nodded absently as he watched Petri walking up to the front door with her olive carryall over her shoulder. She looked up, right into his eyes, and smiled in a way that made his gut sink to his knees.

  Though he didn't say it out loud, in his mind, there was only one word, in bright glowing red letters.

  Everything.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fifth Ward, December 2015

  The living mage's motto

  The trip to the Eternal City had been in the works for a month, due to the logistical planning and magical preparation required. The hardest part had been getting the equipment needed to utilize the Hall portal system to travel to another realm.

  The portal in question was in the fifth ward in the maintenance tunnels beneath the northwest Blue Line station. They'd picked it because the first years were training on the other side of the city, and none of the other third years were living in the fifth. It also had the largest space available, as half the rusty washed-out green generators had been removed years ago, leaving only a few random empty bolt holes in the concrete.

  Zayn was reading through the portal spell on his cell phone, practicing his enunciation, when Vin arrived carrying a black duffle bag. The thunk as he set it on the concrete floor suggested it was much heavier than it looked.

  "My back is killing me," said Vin, placing his hands against his hips and stretching.

  "Was it hard to get?" asked Zayn.

  An expression rose to Vin's face as if he'd left something important back at the house. "No. Strangely easy." He looked up at the group. "Konig handed it over as if he were expecting me to ask."

  "Then what's the problem? Does the Portal Stone not work?" asked Skylar, who was sitting on a rusty generator, swinging her black boots.

  "I ran into Eddie on the way over. We're not the first group to think of this," said Vin.

  Zayn raised his eyebrows in shock. "Eddie's group doesn't have the chops to survive the Eternal City."

  "Eddie's doesn't, but Charla's team thought they did," said Vin with heavy emphasis on the word thought. "Chen and Elena didn't make it back. Charla's pretty messed up from what Eddie said."

  "What do you mean by didn't make it back?" asked Portia, eyes wide with concern.

  Vin squeezed his lips flat. "Dead."

  The news hit him squarely in the chest. Chen was a practical joker with a permanent smile in his eyes, and Elena always seemed too sweet to be an assassin—until it was time to spar and then she'd broken more bones than Vin.

  He choked back a sob. The others had watery eyes as they stared at their shoes. The news didn't feel real, yet too real all at once.

  Zayn saw the tension in their shoulders. "We don't have to do this. We can delay until...until we know more."

  "We're as prepared as we're gonna be," said Keelan, forehead hunched. "I'd rather go now."

  The others nodded quickly with a grim resolve.

  "Are you sure? If we're not focused we're not going to do ourselves any good," said Zayn.

  "This is our only shot for the next couple of weeks," said Vin.

  Zayn took the time to check with each of them. They each responded with a tight-lipped nod. "Alright. We'll do this."

  He'd been preparing a little speech to remind them to be on their toes the whole trip, but that was unnecessary now. They only had to go over final preparations before they could leave.

  Vin unzipped the black duffle bag, revealing a hunk of obsidian in the shape of a giant bullet, except it was covered in gold lines like a circuit board. He hauled it over to the obsidian arch on the wall and started connecting the two together using black wires.

  "Portia, why don't you run over the dangers we might encounter again for everyone," said Zayn.

  Before the news about Charla's team, this kind of repetition might have gotten a collective eye roll, but everyone sat up and listened as if it were their first time hearing it.

  "The main danger, as we know intimately, are the maetrie. Though we're unlikely to encounter them in the location we're traveling to, if we do, our best move is to avoid." Portia held up two fingers. "Second, are the dolgants, the worker class in the Eternal City. Brutally strong, quick to anger—tread lightly when we encounter them, which we will, since these are our likeliest information sources. Third, we have the faeila, about which there's not much known, except that they're typically small and made of concrete or steel or glass. The last one we need to worry about, and if we encounter one, we're likely going to die, is a smoke-eater. They're a mist creature, living fog. They roam the streets picking off dolgants and other creatures foolish enough to walk alone or in small groups. They won't trouble the maetrie, but everyone else is fair game."

  "Sounds wonderful," said Skylar. "I hope none of those ever escape to our world."

  "Don’t worry," said Portia. "They’re native to the Eternal City and can’t live outside of it, which I guess means that someone tried to export them. And those are the main things we might encounter. Zayn said t
o keep it to a short list. I found two dozen other names with little description, except for the wounds left on the bodies found after they attacked, assuming there were bodies left."

  "Okay, Skylar, you're up. What about our cover story?" asked Zayn.

  "We're a delegation from the Ice Hold, inquiring about hiring workers to expand the luxury resort," she said.

  "Good enough," said Zayn. "We probably won't even need to use it, but in case we do it will be helpful. Keelan, what about security?"

  Keelan handed everyone a bronze bracelet covered in jade runes. When Zayn slipped his on, the bracelet vibrated against his skin for a few seconds before settling against his flesh.

  "I layered a couple of enchantments on it. The first should temper the beguiling nature of any maetrie we encounter, the second is a general Look-Away combined with a shadow face that only we can see through. And the final is a ward against scrying, in case anyone detects us."

  Zayn clapped his hands together once for emphasis. "And lastly, but this bears repeating, do not eat or drink in the Eternal City unless you bring it with you, or accept any object. If you do, you'll never be allowed to leave."

  When Vin announced that the portal was ready, everyone put on their individual enchantments. Then they drew lines in front of the portal using a mixture of gargoyle dust, gold filings, and salt. As soon as Vin triggered the portal, a hum filled the air that made Zayn's teeth ache.

  Hand in hand, they stepped towards the archway. Zayn's skin tingled as the portal tugged on him, and the world around him went hazy as if a thin mist had entered the room. Slowly the dingy generator room in the guts of the fifth ward disappeared, replaced by a city street.

  A perpetual gloom hung over this new city. Immediately, Zayn pulled his arms to his chest as if he were cold, even though he'd enchanted away the elements. Mage-lights on cast-iron poles gave the place a distant feeling as if they were entering a dream.

  The sky was the color of dull iron. A quasi-dusk existed as neither day nor night. Oily puddles glistened along the street. A gritty, industrial taste invaded his mouth, making Zayn want to spit.