She took one of Sir Zachary’s peanut butter treats and popped it in her mouth.
“Aren’t those for the dog?” Michael asked.
“Who cares?” Yutika replied, her mouth full of dog treat. “They’re delicious.”
“One-hundred percent vegan goodness!” A.J. beamed.
“The Alliance medical examiner is a quack Level 2 Mender,” Smith said, glaring at the report. “That basically means they have no clue how Remwald died. My dad might have been able to come up with something more conclusive, but there’s no way in hell the Alliance is going to let us near that body.”
Yutika turned to stare at Smith. “Did you just actually admit he’s your dad?”
Smith just crossed his arms and glared at the floor.
I had encountered the Mending skill of Smith’s dad first-hand when he saved my life from a bullet wound that should have killed me. I had no doubt he would have been able to determine something more useful from Remwald’s corpse.
“I knew we shouldn’t have involved the Alliance,” Bri said, echoing my own frustration. “Now we’ll never find out who murdered Remwald.”
“According to this, there isn’t even any evidence of a murder,” Michael pointed out.
“But he was murdered, right?” Bri asked the room.
“Holy shit.” Graysen smacked his forehead with his palm. “I know where I saw that sequence.”
Before I could ask any questions, Gray grabbed Yutika’s pen and note pad off the coffee table. “A.J., phone.”
“Bossy, bossy,” A.J. complained, but he pulled up the photo of Mallorie’s carvings on his phone screen and passed it over.
We all hovered behind Graysen. He kept glancing back at the phone screen as he wrote. He dropped his pen back on the table when he was finished.
“It’s a chemical formula?” I asked.
That much was obvious from the arrows and subscripts. I just didn’t recognize what the formula was for. Although that didn’t mean much, since the only formula I could recall from high school chem was the one for water.
Science had never really been my thing.
The way Mallorie had written everything as just one continuous string looked completely different from what Graysen had drawn, but the ordering of the letters and numbers was the same.
Gray’s turquoise eyes met mine. “I saw it when we were in the basement of MagLab.”
“You remembered all of that, just from seeing it once?” Bri asked, looking impressed.
Graysen nodded.
“Duh,” A.J. said. “Graysen’s a Level 10 Brainiac.”
That made me smile. Gray was too caught up in his revelation to pay any attention to the compliment.
“The formula was written on a beaker of green liquid the Alchemists were all really excited about,” Graysen explained. “It was for the Magical Reduction Potion.”
“That’s the stuff Remwald used to hide his magic,” I said, remembering what the ex-Director had told us. It had allowed him to masquerade as a Nat for his entire career.
Remwald had also told us that he intended to use the Magical Reduction Potion to threaten any Mags who didn’t go along with his plan to enslave the city’s Nats.
“There were different gradations of the potion,” Graysen said, studying the formula. “Their goal was to get to 100% magical reduction over a permanent timeframe.”
A wave of nausea passed through me. The thought of permanently losing my magic was…unthinkable. I may as well have tried to imagine living without my heart.
“Interesting,” Smith murmured. “I can identify every ingredient in that formula except for one.” He tapped the paper over the last part of the formula, AS1.
If Smith couldn’t figure out what that stood for, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance. And the only person who might be able to give us a clue had inexplicably been turned into the mental equivalent of an infant.
What a day.
My phone vibrated, displaying a text from Grandma Tashi.
The dead are talkin.
I let out a breath and started searching for my shoes, motioning to Graysen to do the same.
“Get some dinner and a nap while you can,” I told the others. “We’ll be back in a little bit.”
“What are we doing?” Graysen asked me.
“We’re going to Ma’s.”
✽✽✽
I illusioned Gray and I for the short walk to the house where I’d lived since I was eleven years old. Even though it wasn’t a secret who my family was, I didn’t want to draw any extra attention to them by reminding people we were related. Especially with Valencia Stark on the loose and her followers on the war path. I wouldn’t risk giving one of them the idea to hurt my family to punish me.
Just the thought of that possibility made the blood in my veins ice over.
As we climbed the steps to my family’s porch, I caught Graysen’s glance stray to the house across the street. It was his dad’s.
“Why don’t you go over there while I talk to my grandma?” I suggested.
Gray shook his head. “My dad made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with me.”
To anyone who didn’t know him as well as I did, Graysen looked completely at ease. I knew better.
Guilt settled in the pit of my stomach.
His dad had stopped speaking to him after Gray was accused of murder. But the tension between them had been brewing for years, and it was my fault.
Back in high school, I’d realized that Gray couldn’t have both me and a future in the Alliance. And I’d known he was too stubborn to admit that truth. So, I’d devised a plan to betray him so he’d let me go. Hurting his dad was the only act I could commit that Gray wouldn’t forgive. It had been the only way to give Gray a clear path to the future he deserved.
I’d assumed that, because his dad was so high up in the Alliance, there wouldn’t be any long-term consequences for him. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I had illusioned myself to look like Gray’s dad, and then I’d stolen my file from the Magical Marking Office.
“Gray, I’m—”
“Don’t say it.” He turned to give me his full attention.
“We both fucked up,” he said in a soft voice. “I’m as much to blame in everything that happened as you. Probably more.”
That seemed overly generous. I opened my mouth to say so, but he didn’t give me the chance.
“Instead of apologies, how about this.” Gray pressed a kiss to the side of my neck, making goosebumps race down my arms. “Let’s just agree that, going forward, we’ll do everything together. As a team.”
“I like the sound of that.” I smiled as our noses brushed, feeling lighter than I had since this whole hellish day began.
I opened up the front door to my family’s house and stepped inside. For the second time that day, I got rained on…inside a building.
Water was dripping down from the ceiling and making the tile floor downright treacherous. The rain got heavier the farther we went into the house.
“My hair was not made for this,” I griped as water sluiced down my thick twists and soaked my shirt.
“You look good wet.” Gray shamelessly checked me out. “All you’re missing is a white shirt.”
“You’re a barbarian,” I told him.
Gray’s comeback was lost as shouting erupted from the kitchen.
The Hansley clan, which was how my family referred to ourselves, wasn’t a quiet bunch on a good day. On a bad day, it felt more like a zoo than a house.
But all of it together was what made it home.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” Desiree, my 15-year-old cousin and the source of this indoor rainstorm, shouted. She slammed what sounded like a pot down on the counter.
Desiree, the older of my two cousins, was a Rain Maker like Valencia. She also shared Valencia’s flair for the dramatic. Desiree had been a pain in my ass for as long as I could remember. Ma kept waiting for her to grow out of her
troubled teenage years, but I was pretty sure that was just wishful thinking, and that Desiree was just going to keep on being Desiree forever.
I had grown up with my cousins, and since I didn’t have any siblings of my own, Desiree and Cora had filled that role. That meant I frequently wanted to kill them…or mostly just Desiree…but at the end of the day, I would always love them.
“What’s everybody shouting about?” I asked, having to raise my own voice to be heard.
“The answer is no,” Ma told Desiree, oblivious to my presence as she stared down my cousin, hands fisted on her wide hips.
“But I wanna go to the meeting!” Desiree wailed, tugging on her blue-and-purple braids. “I’m not a friggin’ prisoner. I have rights. Ask Mr. Lawyer Genius Nat over here.” She pointed one of her three-inch long purple nails at Graysen.
“Sorry Desiree,” Gray said, crossing his arms and giving her a shrug. “This house is a monarchy, and Ma’s the queen. The only rights you have are the ones she gives you.”
“That’s my G-Baby.” Ma opened up her arms to Gray, who went to her without hesitation.
“Who asked him, anyway?” Desiree demanded. “Dirty Nat.”
My gasp wasn’t the only one in the room. Cora, Desiree’s younger sister, pressed her hand to her mouth. Ma let go of Gray and pinned Desiree with a stare that could make a grown man wet himself.
“Desiree Hansley,” Ma said, her voice a low growl. “This is my house, and if you’re gonna see fit to live here, you will not talk like that.”
“You’re going to get Kaira killed,” Desiree accused Graysen.
Gray, who hadn’t reacted to the dirty Nat slur, stiffened.
“Shut your mouth,” I told my cousin. “Or I’ll shut it for you.”
Desiree’s glower turned into a smirk. “Your boyfriend’s gonna get what’s coming to him. All the Nats will.”
I started forward, but Graysen wound an arm around my waist and held me back. He knew from past experience that hair pulling and clawing weren’t out of the realm of possibility when it came to me and Desiree.
“Enough.” Ma’s voice was soft, but that somehow made it scarier. “Desiree Hansley, you march yourself upstairs and come down when you’re ready to behave civil.”
Even Desiree knew better than to mess with Ma when she talked like that.
Desiree stalked past me and thudded up the stairs to her bedroom. From all the stomping and slamming of doors, she sounded more like a herd of elephants than a single girl. If I’d been feeling braver, I would have actually illusioned her into the appropriate animal. But I wasn’t in the mood to drown in freezing rain.
“I’m so sorry about that, G-Baby,” Ma told Graysen with a heavy sigh.
He gave her an easy shrug. “I know Desiree doesn’t mean any harm by it.”
Usually, that was true. Desiree had a habit of snapping off the head of the nearest target. But throwing around slurs was a new low for her.
“What’s going on with her?” I asked, as Ma enveloped me in a hug that carried her familiar scent of home cooking.
The tension in Ma’s embrace transformed to something softer. “I think Desiree is lashing out because we’re coming up on the anniversary.”
In the Hansley house, the anniversary wasn’t a cause for celebration. It was something that even mentioning would make Ma tear up, Grandma Tashi mutter under her breath, and my cousins retreat to their rooms.
Gray rested his hand on the small of my back in silent comfort. He knew what those words meant to me, and the memories they evoked.
I had almost forgotten about that looming date with everything else that was occupying my thoughts. But that didn’t mean I’d forgotten about the event itself.
Everything that had happened with the trial and recent murders was bringing memories to the surface that needed to stay buried if I was going to keep my head on straight.
Ma went back to her cooking, making it clear she was as interested in dwelling on the past as I was. More door slamming and stomping came from upstairs.
Ma pursed her lips and frowned at the stove, where butter was starting to brown in a cast iron skillet. “This little display is because Desiree wants to go to an UnAllied rally in the Common—” She paused while she sifted flour into the pan. “—And is having a royal fit that I won’t let her.”
I sank down onto a barstool and covered my face with my hands. “If Valencia hadn’t escaped from her trial, the UnAllied would have crawled back into whatever dark hole they came from.”
I wanted to find whoever had attacked the courtroom. And then I’d strangle them with my bare hands.
“Unfortunately, all this trial nonsense has been fuel for the fire,” Ma replied.
Ma was right. This wasn’t just about Desiree. It was about every Mag in the city, and the fact that so many of them thought Valencia would represent their interests more than whoever the Alliance elected in November.
I may not trust the Alliance, but even I couldn’t deny it was the better alternative to a world where Valencia was in charge.
We’d be better off with babbling, thumb-sucking William Mallorie.
Leaving Ma and Gray to catch up, I went over to hug Cora. My sweet, youngest cousin was gathering up her sodden textbooks.
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked, after Cora had finished telling me about school and how her magic studies were coming.
“Keepin’ away from all that hollerin’, that’s what.” Grandma Tashi came into kitchen from the hall and gave all of us a suspicious look.
“Hi Grandma.” I went over and bent down to give her a kiss.
Grandma Tashi was shorter than me by about a foot, but her rigid posture and even more rigid personality always made her seem bigger than she was. Her rail-thin arms disguised a strength of both body and mind that shouldn’t be possible for someone of her age.
My grandma had been through hell and back during the Atlanta Slaughters. Instead of crumbling, she’d come out the other side even stronger.
I was only seven years old when Ma and Grandma Tashi got what was left of the Hansley clan out of Atlanta. I remembered enough about the city at that time to appreciate what it must have taken for them to get a little girl, a toddler, and an infant halfway across the country.
Thinking about their strength made me a little less hopeless about what was feeling like my own insurmountable challenge.
“What have you been doin’ to get the dead so riled up?” Grandma Tashi demanded.
She had to crane her neck back to glare at Gray and me, but that didn’t make it any less daunting.
“Why do you assume it’s our fault?” I replied.
Grandma Tashi pointed a bony finger in our direction. “Trouble sticks to the two of you like glue.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“So, what have the dead been saying?” Graysen asked, gently steering the conversation. I hid my smile when he backed up a step, like he was getting ready to flee in case my grandma flew off the handle on him.
With Grandma Tashi, the possibility couldn’t be ruled out.
“Three young ones, all sayin’ the same thing.” Grandma closed her eyes. “They said, ‘It was all al lie. The graves are empty.’”
She opened her eyes.
“It’s all a lie; the graves are empty,” Graysen repeated. “What does that mean?”
“How should I know?” my grandma snapped. “I’m a Medium, not a Telepath.”
“Can you tell us more about these dead people?” Graysen asked, his lawyer’s cap fully in place.
“Young, beautiful children. Two girls and a boy.” Grandma Tashi shook her head. “Breaks my heart every time young ones visit me. Unusual, too.”
“Unusual?” Graysen asked.
“The young don’t usually concern themselves with our world,” Grandma replied.
Grandma Tashi had once explained to me that the dead came to her when something triggered them. Whatever ties they still had to the living made them wan
t to talk about it.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the triggering event had been this trial, and if so, what the connection was. The trial certainly had all the living in a stir.
“Something else that was unusual,” Grandma said, tapping her finger on the table. “They told me their names. The dead don’t usually bother with those kinds of details.”
As Grandma repeated the names, I texted them to Smith, along with the cryptic words the dead had repeated.
Why couldn’t the dead just spell things out?
I’d asked Grandma Tashi that question more than once growing up. Her reply was always the same: it wasn’t the dead’s responsibility to make up for the living’s stupidity.
I sighed.
“Remwald didn’t come to visit you, did he?” Graysen asked my grandmother.
“Boy, I ain’t a phone operator,” Grandma Tashi said. “And just ’cause someone’s dead, doesn’t mean he’s gonna come knockin’ inside my skull.”
“Right, sorry.” Graysen gave my grandmother an apologetic smile that would have instantly thawed anyone else.
“Graysen, want to see what I’ve been working on?” Cora asked, breaking the tension.
“Love to.” Gray sat down at the table next to my youngest cousin. In seconds, the two of them were huddled over her soggy textbook while they talked about Cora’s Test and the requirements for getting into the BSMU.
The sight warmed my heart…which was a good thing, because my soaked clothes were making my teeth chatter.
Cora was an Inanimate Illusionist like Ma. Because Cora was a Level 3 compared to Ma’s Level 8 and my Level 10, she never thought she was good enough. Her dream was to get into the BSMU, and so she spent just about every waking minute studying and trying to improve her magic.
Magic type wasn’t always inherited, but children often carried a component of one of their older relative’s magic. My paternal grandfather was an Animate Illusionist, and he passed down his magic to Ma, Cora, and me.
My phone started to buzz in my hand. Smith.
“Three things,” Smith said as soon as the call connected. “The first is that I tracked down the dead kids who came looking for your grandma. They’re definitely important, somehow.”
“Are you going to make me guess or—”
Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set Page 39
