Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set

by Stephanie Fazio

  Bri swung herself back into the van, closed the door, and blew on her fists until her skin turned normal again.

  My hands were clammy, and I let out a shuddering breath. No one else in the car reacted. It was like this was something she did all the time.

  “You should have let me have that one,” A.J. complained. “I wanted to see if I could make him go like E.T.”

  “You know, the part with the bike,” he continued, when no one replied.

  “I can’t concentrate with A.J. babbling,” complained a guy, whose voice I recognized as the one that had been yelling through Kaira’s headset.

  I hadn’t noticed him at first because he was sitting behind a work station that had been built into the back of the van’s interior. There were three laptops balanced on the desktop and a tangle of wires at his feet. I couldn’t really make out the guy’s face because he had the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up, and his long, greasy hair hung on either side of him like a curtain. He was still wearing his headset, even though Kaira had pulled hers off.

  “Boyfriend, until you can lift a car in the air, talk to the hand.” A.J. made a talk to the hand gesture I hadn’t seen anyone use since middle school.

  “I’m over here making us disappear,” Computer Guy shot back. “You know how many cameras are in that prison?”

  Kaira held up her hand to stop A.J. from retorting. “Smith, can you get us green lights all the way?”

  “Well, yeah, and—”

  “And scramble the Nat police’s communication. I don’t want them following us.”

  Smith’s fingers didn’t touch any of the keyboards, but I could see the screens flickering and changing as he manipulated them with his mind.

  Techies were rare, especially powerful ones. And Smith was clearly powerful—at least a Level 8—if he could turn off all the prison’s cameras and affect the police’s communication.

  The van screeched down the road. When I looked back, I realized no one was chasing us anymore.

  A.J. sat back and fanned himself. “Whew, that one got the ticker pounding.” He elbowed me in the ribs and winked at me. “You were really locked up in there.”

  I was still trying to process what exactly had just happened and couldn’t think of a single word to say.

  “What’s the matter?” A.J. asked. “Kitty cat got your tongue?”

  I just shook my head, still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I was no longer in prison.

  “We did all this rescuing for a mute?” A.J. complained. “Kaira, you promised me a new friend.”

  “Ignore Whiny Pants,” the woman driving the van said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” Michael told her, as we all grabbed for something to hold onto when the van lurched around another corner.

  “That’s Sir Whiny Pants to you,” A.J. retorted, seemingly unperturbed by the hazardous driving.

  My heartbeat started to slow, and as it did, I was hit by the revelation that Kaira and five other high-level Magics had just broken me out the highest security prison in all of Boston—possibly in the country. The sky outside was lightening, and in a few short hours, I would have been sitting in a courtroom full of jurors who undoubtedly would have convicted me. I would have been executed by day’s end.

  “Who the hell are you people?” I asked.

  “The Nat speaketh!” A.J. applauded.

  I looked at Kaira. “Why?” I managed.

  Her fierce gaze softened, but her tone was flippant when she said, “Because I didn’t see anyone else rushing to save you.”

  “I—” I began. “I mean, thank you. All of you.” There were six people in the van besides me, and of them, Kaira was the only one who wasn’t a complete stranger.

  Why would these Magics risk their lives for someone they’d never met?

  “How did you even know?” I asked.

  There was a chorus of snorts and guffaws from the five strangers, but Kaira’s eyes were full of sympathy.

  “You’re all over the news, Gray.”

  Right. Of course I was. Twenty cop cars parked on the quad, and ten-thousand students with cell phones. It was all just too much. My brain was rapid-firing, but everything ground to a halt when my thoughts snagged on one person.

  “My dad,” I choked.

  “Joseph Galder is under surveillance,” Smith said from behind his laptop screens. “Three detectives in the house, and four more in two separate patrol cars outside 136 Bolter Street, Beacon Hill.”

  “What Smith is trying to say,” Kaira said, “is that your dad is fine, but we can’t get near him.”

  “I need to talk to him. To tell him—”

  “Phone and Internet lines tapped,” Smith said, like he was some kind of Techie robot.

  “He’s being investigated as an accomplice,” Kaira explained. “You can’t try to contact him until the cops and surveillance are gone.”

  “Especially now that you’re a fugitive,” A.J. added helpfully.

  A fugitive.

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but my mouth had gone too dry for me to manage it.

  Ten seconds. That’s how long it took for the police to slam me up against the side of the dorm and lock the handcuffs on me. That’s how long it took for the life I’d been working toward every day for the last three years—hell, every day since the start of high school—to come crashing down around me.

  “I’m so sorry, Gray,” Kaira said in a quiet voice.

  “Why did you all risk…everything for me? Now they’ll be searching for all of you, too.”

  My words were met with more laughter.

  “Sweetie, the authorities were looking for us long before your pretty face came along,” A.J. said.

  “They’re all unMarked like me,” Kaira explained.

  “We’re colleagues,” Bri said, her voice full of pride.

  The van turned onto the Mass Turnpike. It was the beginning of rush hour, but somehow, Smith managed to keep us moving through traffic. The van swerved and darted around cars in its path, much to the irritation of Michael, who kept telling the driver—whose name I learned was Yutika—that she wasn’t allowed behind the wheel anymore. Yutika had shot back that she was from New York City and hadn’t even driven a car until she was nineteen, a fact which didn’t make me feel any more comfortable about having my life in her hands.

  The others in the car bickered good-naturedly, like breaking a death-row inmate out of a maximum-security prison was just another day at the office. My mind had gone a little numb, like it had been stretched to the breaking point and needed to go into sleep mode before it overheated. I stared out the window without really seeing anything as we got off the Pike and drove through the quieter streets in Beacon Hill.

  “We can’t go to the house,” I said as soon as I realized where the van was heading. “If the cops find it, you’ll never be able to go back there.”

  “He knows about the house?” Yutika asked.

  “You certainly were neighborly, weren’t you?” A.J. raised an eyebrow. “The closest I ever got to my neighbor growing up was when Mrs. Troll sprayed me with a hose for getting too close to her side of the fence.”

  “Was her name really Mrs. Troll?” Bri asked.

  “No, but it suited her,” A.J. replied.

  “Don’t worry,” Kaira told me, speaking over the others. “Ma illusioned the house, so no one’ll be able to find us.”

  Ma Hansley, Kaira’s mom, was a Level 8 Inanimate Illusionist. I had always thought that together, Ma and Kaira could rule the world.

  “Did she know you were going to do this for me?” I asked, my voice coming out rough.

  “I didn’t discuss it with her,” Kaira replied.

  A flood of guilt hit me.

  Ma Hansley had lost most of her family, including her father, brothers, and husband—Kaira’s dad—in the Atlanta Slaughters when Kaira was just a baby. She was a fierce mamma bear to anyone she considered family,
which for Ma included half the neighborhood. Still, I didn’t think Ma would be okay with Kaira taking such a risk. I wasn’t okay with her taking such a risk.

  The van slowed as we entered a narrow alley behind the houses. The van took a right, and I winced as it headed straight for a brick wall. Instead of either turning or hitting the wall, which was what I was honestly expecting with the way Yutika was driving, the van slid right through the illusion. We lurched to a stop inside a narrow garage.

  “We’re ho-ome,” A.J. announced.

  CHAPTER 11

  Good job, team,” Kaira said as we piled out of the van.

  Smith grunted and handed me one of his laptops, which I took to mean that I should carry it inside.

  The moment I stepped into the house, I was assaulted by memories. This was the house Kaira’s paternal grandpa had left her in high school. It was where Kaira and I had spent all of our free time. It was the only place we had ever really felt safe.

  Back then, though, the inside of the house had looked very different from the way it did now. The house had been empty of furniture when Kaira first inherited it. We had scraped together our savings from various summer jobs and bought a couch, a table, and a bed off eBay. They had been the most adult purchases of our lives, and when the furniture was successfully delivered, we had just sat on the couch and giggled like two evil maniacs for about a week straight.

  We had hauled up the heavy pieces of the bed set—which had arrived deconstructed—to the master bedroom. I had brought my old stereo over, and we blasted music while we built the bed. For some reason we couldn’t work out, the bed had ended up being slightly tilted and smaller than advertised. Still, neither of us had complained.

  The house looked nothing like the way I remembered it. The small living area was bursting with two couches, two coffee tables strewn with Smith’s electronics, and three oversized bean bags. Colored lights were strung all along the top of the wall, and there were books, bags of potato chips, empty soda cans, and other odds and ends scattered over every surface that wasn’t taken up by electronics. The place wasn’t a complete mess, but it had a thoroughly lived-in kind of feel.

  From the way the others sprawled out on the furniture, it was obvious they lived here with Kaira. I didn’t quite know how to feel about the fact that these people had made their home in a place that had once belonged to Kaira and me. At the same time, it made it easier for me to keep my memories of this place in the past where they belonged.

  I was startled out of my reverie as banging erupted in the kitchen. A.J. sat on top of the island with his legs crossed like he was some kind of a flamboyant Buddha. He was waving his hands as pots and pans flew through the air around him. He swayed his arms and hips, and the kitchenware responded with a synchronized dance of their own. Even A.J.’s tie started to levitate when a particularly excited pot almost collided with a casserole dish. It looked like a scene straight out of Beauty and the Beast.

  “A.J. stress-cooks,” Bri told me. “He’s pretty good, too.”

  “He’d be even better if he didn’t insist on making everything vegan.” Yutika made a face.

  “Do you have any idea how many cows are slaughtered each year?” A.J. called back from the kitchen. “This house will not be complicit. Do you hear me? Not complicit!”

  Yutika opened her mouth to retort, but whatever she said was drowned out by the opera music now blaring from the kitchen.

  Yutika raised her voice to say, “We all know you don’t need those hand motions to levitate anything. You just think they make you look cool.”

  “Can’t hear you!” A.J. shouted over the opera music.

  “I’m Yutika,” she said, holding out her hand and giving me a friendly smile.

  Yutika was short and a little chubby. Her thick black hair was wild, and she kept blowing at her bangs to get them out of her eyes, which made her look continually windswept. She also had a gap between her front teeth that was on prominent display whenever she smiled, which seemed to be often.

  “So, you’re the resident getaway driver around here?” I asked.

  Her smile broadened. “Not usually. This was kind of a one-time special occasion since I was the only one with free hands. Usually I’m just in the back with my sketchbook.”

  When she saw my puzzled look, she clarified, “I’m a Creator.”

  I had never met a Creator before, but I knew from my ABCs of Magical Abilities class that Creators could bring objects to life by drawing them on paper.

  It was considered impolite to ask a Magic directly about her ability and level, but I figured we were past that given what we’d all just been through together. Besides, I was curious.

  “Could you bring a cow to life just by drawing it, then?”

  A.J.’s wail came from the kitchen, although I wasn’t sure if it was from the suggestion of creating a cow or whatever was now making smoke waft over the stovetop.

  Yutika rolled her eyes in A.J.’s direction, but she was smiling. “My magic goes a little funky with anything alive, but hypothetically—”

  “No, no, no! No cows!” A.J. shrieked.

  Yutika laughed as she swatted at the fork that had zoomed from the kitchen to buzz around her. “My job around here is more functional. I make all the money and any documentation our refugees need—plane tickets, passports, getaway vehicles…. You may have noticed the van we picked you up in was built to our specific needs—that’s ’cause I drew it that way.”

  “You mean this isn’t the first time you’ve broken someone like me out of prison?”

  “Prison is actually a first for us,” she said.

  “We’ve also never saved a Nat before,” Smith, the Techie, said from behind his laptop screen.

  I wasn’t sure how much to read into his gruff tone, so I didn’t say anything.

  “I was the first initiate into the Six,” Yutika continued. “Well, after Kaira, anyway.”

  “The Six?”

  “Six Magics,” Yutika said, pointing at each of them.

  “I see,” I said.

  Kaira came over to sit on the couch’s armrest. She draped a casual arm over Yutika’s shoulder.

  I gave up on trying to think of a delicate way to ask the question and just blurted out, “Are you all unMarked?”

  “All unMarked, all Level 10s,” Bri replied.

  “I told you,” Kaira said to me. “There are lots of Mags who don’t want to be monitored. Since we had the magic and resources to save ourselves, we’re paying it forward by helping other Mags in a bad situation.”

  “Not just a lone criminal anymore, then?” I asked Kaira. I hadn’t meant the question to sound confrontational, but I heard the emotion in my own voice.

  “These criminals just saved you from execution,” Michael, the big guy, spoke for the first time.

  “Be nice,” Yutika told Michael, swatting the back of his head. “The Nat’s been through a lot. He’s probably in shock.”

  I didn’t try to argue with that.

  Bri smiled at me. “Nice to meet you, by the way. I’m the Six’s Steel, in case you hadn’t already figured that out.”

  “Steel, as in—”

  “Well, it’s a bit of a misnomer, actually. My body turns into titanium, not steel, but there isn’t a designation for that on the Test. So, I just call myself a Steel to make things easier.”

  “Bri is our newest recruit,” Kaira said.

  “Newest and coolest,” Bri said. “I’ll fight anyone who disagrees.”

  The others put up their hands in surrender.

  “I’m the coolest!” A.J. argued from the table, where he was overseeing the silverware and dishes that were setting themselves.

  I was having trouble processing all of this. These people were all acting like they were just a group of friends living and working together. None of them seemed to notice, or care, that they were breaking more laws between them than I could count.

  Of course, it wasn’t like I was one to talk. Especially n
ot now that I had escaped from prison.

  Part of me still expected to wake up only to realize someone had slipped some hallucinogen into my drink during the party….

  “You’re getting that slack-jawed look again,” A.J. said, coming over to peer at my face. “Are you going to faint? Tell me if you’re going to faint. I hate being surprised by that sort of thing.”

  “A.J., let the man breathe,” Kaira ordered.

  “Don’t you want to go to college?” I asked them when I’d regained my personal space. The BSMU valedictorian side of me was trying to process all the lost talent of six Level 10s living outside of the law.

  “The Alliance puts Level 10s in boxes and studies them like animals,” Smith said without looking up from his screen. “There was a blog post just yesterday about—”

  I lost whatever else he was saying as the room erupted in groans, give it a rest’s, and not again’s.

  “If you ask Smith, there’s a conspiracy for everything,” Yutika explained, rolling her eyes. “The government is planning to poison our water, the Alliance is trying to take us apart with tweezers and study us in petri dishes, and Russia is spying on us through our cell phone cameras.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see who’s laughing when you all get carted off for some science experiment, and I’m safe and hunkered down in some basement somewhere.”

  “Probably your mom’s,” A.J. said. “We all know you’re grungy enough to pull it off.”

  A comb zoomed in from another room and started carefully brushing through A.J.’s already tangle-free black hair, as if to emphasize his own non-grunginess.

  “Not all Techies live in their parents’ basement,” Smith replied with a scowl. “That’s just an over-used trope people who don’t know their ass from their hard drive use to make themselves feel better.”

  “I was hiding out in my parents’ basement after I ducked my Test,” Bri told me. “I would have been stuck down there forever if my parents hadn’t found out about Kaira and asked her to help me. Now, I get to help other people. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.”

  “So, you help suspected criminals like me disappear?” I asked, still trying to get a handle on exactly what Kaira was involved with.