by Devon Monk
The sizzle of bacon hitting the pan made me smile, and then the salt and maple of the bacon 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.
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 over my shorts and T-shirt. 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 Lannister, Sedra’s bodyguard and a member of the Authority I hadn’t seen 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 the current Authority betrayer—had kidnapped Sedra.
The gun in Dane’s 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 him 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 be pointing a gun at us.
“We are going to do this quietly,” he said. “Very quietly.”
He stepped into the room and two other men I hadn’t even seen followed behind him. I didn’t know them, or at least I didn’t think I knew them. 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,” he 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.
The two men strode across the room, silently, straight toward Zayvion. Without breaking stride, they both flicked their fingers, releasing a spell they’d been holding. I could hear more people behind us, maybe two, maybe four.
They’d used Illusions to give them time to spread out into the room. Illusions so well cast, I couldn’t smell the magic they were using for it. There could have been an army of people in the room right now, with guns, knives, swords at our backs.
My skin crawled, and it was all I could do not to turn and look, but Dane’s gun was unwavering. I could hear very soft footsteps on my carpet. I counted at least five people in the room. Two in front closing in fast on Zayvion, two behind doing the same, and Dane, still just on this side of the closed door, the barrel of his gun steady, 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 what they were doing to Zayvion out of my peripheral vision. 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, “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 have called 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 burned bones.
I didn’t have any weapons—which scared the hell out of me, and that, in turn, only made me more angry.
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 my dad had been in my head for months now. 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, Greyson and I, gave your father. The kind of death I will give you. But first, I want to know where Daniel is keeping Sedra.”
Holy crap. I knew Greyson, along with James Hoskil, had been a part of my dad’s murder, but I didn’t 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 thorough plan to hold Sedra hostage and use her as a sacrifice to bring Mikhail back into power. I don’t know what Daniel plans 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 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. “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, like a faint trembling 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 w
ere 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 last 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 lifted the gun slightly, aiming at my head. “Tell your father I want to talk to him.”
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Teaser chapter
