The others were looking back and forth between us, as though they were watching a verbal tennis match. This was the same argument Gray and I had been having in some variation since high school.
Instead of the angry retort I wanted to give, I went for one I knew would tug on Gray’s heartstrings.
“I had to give up my position in the ballet company when I went unMarked,” I reminded him. “I couldn’t go to college or see any of my friends from school.” I swallowed. “I couldn’t have you.”
I looked out the window while I collected my emotions. This conversation was turning personal in a way I never got with anyone except Gray. I suddenly wished we’d waited until we were alone to have this argument.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t want our children to have to choose between living a normal life and having their every move tracked by the government.”
Our friends studiously fixed their gazes anywhere except on us.
Gray’s expression softened. “Kai.” He cupped my cheek as he leaned into me. “We’re going to find a way to get the Super Mags free and change the second high law,” he promised. “But we have to do it legally, otherwise we’re no better than the UnAllied.”
“I could just hack into the Alliance and change the language,” Smith offered.
“I think people would notice if the high laws suddenly changed,” Bri pointed out. “Especially if they said something like ‘Mags can take out their trackers. And all families now need a bomb shelter, because the government is out to get us and the apocalypse is coming.’”
Smith raised an eyebrow, as though he thought the idea bore deeper consideration.
“Maybe we could find a puppet Director,” Bri suggested. “You know, someone who would do whatever we told them to do after they were elected.”
“Or Michael could just Whisper to Pruwist,” Yutika added.
Tempting. Very tempting.
“All of the above would fall under the illegal category,” Graysen said. His brow creased in thought. “But it is worth looking into Pruwist’s opponents. Maybe one of them would be a better leader for our city.”
“If you and Kaira endorse one of his opponents,” Michael said, “that would go a long way toward tipping the scales. After outing Remwald and MagLab, Bostonians trust you and know you have their best interests in mind.”
“I’ll start looking into the other candidates’ platforms as soon as we have a free minute,” Graysen promised.
Sir Zachary hopped off Bri’s lap and commando-crawled across the cushions to me. I felt some of my tension ease as the little dog nosed my hand until I started petting him.
“Um, can we talk about what Sir Zachary did for a second?” Bri asked.
“If it hadn’t been for that barbequed Manipulator, I would have thought I imagined the whole thing,” Yutika said. She reached back and gave Sir Zachary a pat.
“I told you he was special,” A.J. gloated.
“If you hadn’t gone back for him, the Manipulator wouldn’t have gotten all of our magic,” Smith accused. “You people are just lucky that psychopath couldn’t figure out what to do with my magic. Otherwise, the whole city would probably be dark right now.”
“Could you do that?” I asked.
Smith nodded.
Yutika let out a low whistle.
“I feel like we’re on some scary reality TV show,” A.J. said. “I’m obviously the star.”
“Psh, as if,” Bri said.
She still wasn’t fully back to her bubbly self, but if she and A.J. were teasing each other, I knew she’d be alright.
“Slow down,” Smith ordered Michael. “We’re almost there.”
It was pitch black. The only illumination on the dark road came from the van’s headlights.
“Here,” Smith said.
Michael turned onto a gravel driveway that was almost invisible from the road.
“This place creeps me out,” Yutika said in a quiet voice as the van bumped along the driveway.
“You and me both,” Smith muttered.
We all knew better than to press him for any more of an explanation, but I could tell Yutika was holding back a thousand questions she was dying to ask Smith.
“Should we have called your dad to let him know we we’re coming?” I asked, realizing what an imposition it would be to have seven-and-a-half homeless hellions descending on a man who lived alone.
“He doesn’t have a phone,” was Smith’s only response.
We all stayed close to Smith when we got out of the van. Since his dad didn’t allow electronics of any kind into his house, we couldn’t use our phones’ flashlights. Smith navigated through the overgrown yard with ease, pointing out the various booby traps on the property so we didn’t get ourselves killed.
We were almost at the back door—supposedly Older Smith had a thing against using front doors and had barricaded his—when a gruff voice spoke.
“Come any closer, and I’ll stop your hearts.”
CHAPTER 26
It’s me and my friends,” Smith said quickly.
“Oh.”
Older Smith held up the lantern in his hand, illuminating his gaunt face.
“The UnAllied broke into our house and destroyed it,” I said, since Smith wasn’t jumping to offer an explanation. “We, um—”
The awkwardness of asking Older Smith to put us up made me hesitate.
“Well, you better come in, then,” Older Smith said, saving me from having to figure out something to say. He let out a heavy sigh and disappeared into the house.
There wasn’t much to see in the dark, but I remembered from the last time we’d been here that the house was an old Victorian-style mansion. The wood was dark and beautiful. It looked haunted, especially with the way the inside was only illuminated by candlelight. Shadows flickered in every corner, and the floorboards creaked beneath our steps. I could tell my friends were as creeped out as I was.
Gray and Sir Zachary were the only ones who seemed at ease.
I heard the tinkle of Sir Zachary’s collar and his loud sniffing as he explored the house.
“Mr. Smith.” Graysen held out his hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
Smith’s dad looked at Gray for an uncomfortably long time before shaking his hand.
“Well, I guess you ought to get yourselves settled in,” Older Smith said. “Do what you need to do, and then you can come on down for some dinner.”
Older Smith startled when Sir Zachary trotted over to him. The dog sat at his feet, his tail sweeping back and forth across the floorboards.
Older Smith stared down at him.
“Unusual dog you’ve got there,” Older Smith said. And then he turned on his heel and disappeared into the gloom.
I wanted to call him back and ask what he meant, but Smith gave me a little shake of his head. So, I stayed silent and followed the others upstairs.
“Okay, people,” Yutika said. “If you give me a list of what you need—clothes, toiletries, favorite snacks—I can start replacing our necessities.”
All at once, the loss of our house struck me at full force. I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath. I covered my mouth, but I couldn’t completely mask the choked sound that came out of me.
“Kai.” Gray’s concerned face hovered in front of mine.
I doubled over, holding my stomach as the loss washed over me.
“Kaira, sweetie,” A.J. said as he rubbed my back. “You’re okay.”
Gray pulled me down onto the step and cradled me against his side.
Bri and Yutika murmured soft words, while Smith and Michael hung back awkwardly.
“It was just a house,” Smith said.
“Not helping,” A.J. told him.
“It’s not the house.” I swallowed back tears.
“What is it, babe?” Gray smoothed my hair back from my face.
“Our couch.” I let out a hiccup-y sob. “I loved that couch.”
My friends exchanged a loo
k. There was a lot of lip twitching and throat clearing as they tried to keep straight faces. It wasn’t like I could blame them. I was being ridiculous.
It was just that I couldn’t begin to count the number of hours we’d all spent on that couch. It was where we’d watched every bad movie under the sun. It was also where we’d planned all of our old jobs and plotted Remwald’s takedown.
“You mean Yutika’s puke couch?” Bri asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Yutika groaned. “Worst night ever.”
“I get it,” Graysen said, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “I had that stereo in our bedroom since I was a kid. How else do you think I learned to dance so expertly?”
I managed a little snort at that.
“I’m going to miss my blender.” A.J. sighed in despair. “That model doesn’t come in teal anymore.”
“I lost about five-hundred dollars’ worth of vanilla candles,” Bri said, getting into it.
“It’s going to take me months to rebuild my soda can pyramid,” Smith lamented.
“I miss my bed,” Yutika said. “That was where the true magic happened.”
“Yutika,” Michael murmured, blushing furiously.
“I so did not need that image in my head,” Bri said, squeezing her eyes shut.
“How about you, Michael?” I asked. “What are you going to miss?”
“The only thing we can’t replace is each other,” he said in a gruff voice. “That’s all that matters.”
“Be still my heart.” Yutika clutched at her chest as she gave Michael a smacking kiss on his lips.
Michael’s blush went all the way down his neck. He began to squirm when Bri and A.J. hugged him.
I let out a shaky laugh and wiped away an errant tear.
By the time we made it upstairs and divvied up bedrooms, I felt like myself again.
Gray and I got the bedroom we’d stayed in the last time we were here, since the others had apparently grown fond of the rooms they’d had before. Our room was a snug space with a queen-sized bed, sturdy desk that was bare of everything except for a lantern, and an adjoining bathroom.
We both showered quickly to wash away the remnants of our fight against the UnAllied. When we got out of the shower, we found clean, newly-created outfits left outside our door. There was also a small pile of toiletries: toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, and even my favorite hair conditioner.
Yutika must have been reading my mind, because the outfits were pure comfort. Mine was purple fleece pants and a snug tank top with a built-in bra. Gray got flannel pants and a V-neck tee that molded to his sculpted chest.
I was about to suggest skipping dinner, when I glanced out the window. I could just see the sun peeking up over the trees.
“We’re going to figure this out by Monday,” Gray told me, following my gaze. “And then, when all of this is over, I’m sweeping you away.”
“Like on a vacation?”
The concept was so foreign I couldn’t hold back a deranged giggle.
“Exactly like a vacation.” Gray pressed a soft kiss to my lips.
While Gray shaved and jotted down notes from the books he’d lost in our house, I headed downstairs. I followed the smell of pasta to the kitchen. I was about to step inside, when angry voices made me go still.
“I told you this would happen, didn’t I?” Older Smith asked.
“I was as careful as I could be,” Smith snapped. “I have no idea how they found us.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Older Smith let out a dry, humorless laugh. “You can’t trust technology. It’ll betray you every time.”
“What do you want me to do?” Smith asked. “I can’t just stop being what I am.”
There was clearly more going on with this conversation than I was privy to, but I wasn’t going to stand here while someone threw blame on Smith. This man might have saved my life, but Smith was one of the Seven.
I stepped into the kitchen and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Smith.
“We really appreciate you letting us stay here,” I told his dad. “But what happened wasn’t Smith’s fault. It was Valencia’s. If anything, Smith saved all of our lives. Without his magic, we wouldn’t have had a warning before the UnAllied attacked us.”
Neither one of them said anything, but I thought I detected a softening around both of their tight expressions. There was a sound like a stampede of elephants, and then the others were crowding into the room with us.
There was a flurry of activity as Older Smith put a giant bowl of pasta on the table. Smith and his dad set out jars of tomato sauce, a bottle of olive oil, and semi-thawed bags of shredded mozzarella. For a man who lived alone, he was decently stocked to host a dinner party.
“I’m sorry that we’ve taken over your house like this,” I told him, feeling guilty for imposing on him and then mouthing off to him. If Grandma Tashi had been here, my ears would still be ringing from her verbal assault.
Older Smith just humphed and set a pitcher of ice water down on the table.
“Kittens, we need to talk,” A.J. said.
He was wearing slippers that were in the shape of dogs that bore more than a passing resemblance to Sir Zachary. The dog in question trotted back and forth between the non-vegans at the table, begging for mozzarella.
A.J. reached under his chair and slapped a stack of papers down on the table.
Smith turned up one of the lanterns to illuminate the papers. It was then that I noticed the slight hairline tears along the top sheet.
“The papers from Eleanor Ridley’s shredder,” I said in disbelief. “I can’t believe you thought to grab them.”
“I’m just fantastic that way,” A.J. said with an immodest shrug. And then, he admitted, “I actually forgot all about them until I went back for Sir Zachary and saw them on my desk.”
We all hovered around as Smith rearranged the lanterns so we could read the papers.
They were invoices. We all grabbed a sheet off the stack to examine more closely.
I stared down at the page in my hand. There was an invoice number, date, and a ‘bill to’ address that Smith confirmed was MagLab. Each one of the invoices had three columns for quantity, description, and amount. On the invoice I held, the quantity noted two ounces. Under the ‘description’ column, there was only one item: Agent S. The amount was $500,000.
For two ounces.
Whatever the hell Agent S was, it was pricey.
We went through the entire stack of invoices. There were slight variations in the quantity and price, but every single one was for Agent S.
“What the hell is Agent S?” Yutika asked.
“That’s the question,” Graysen replied. “Whatever it is, Remwald was funneling millions out of other Alliance programs to pay for it.”
The disgust in his voice was plain.
“And a whole lot of it was brought to MagLab,” Michael said, flipping back through the pages. “These invoices are just from this year.”
“Eleanor Ridley was probably cooking the books,” Smith said. “With her magic, it would have been easy.”
A painful jolt went through me as I was reminded of my father.
Not now, I told myself. To let my mind go there would be to fall apart. And I needed to keep my wits about me.
“Hold on a sec.” Gray took one of the invoices and flipped it over. He grabbed Yutika’s pen, which was lying on the edge of the table, and started to write.
I recognized the formula William Mallorie had written on his table, which we’d all memorized since Gray figured out it was for the Magical Reduction Potion.
Gray circled the last part of the formula—the one ingredient Smith hadn’t been able to identify before.
AS1.
“Ohmygosh,” Bri said. “Agent S.”
Gray nodded.
“You little Level 10 Brainiac, you,” A.J. said, ruffling Graysen’s hair.
“How does this help us find the murderer?” Yuti
ka asked.
“It doesn’t,” Gray replied. “But now we know what that person is after. Somehow, it’s related to the Magical Reduction Potion.”
CHAPTER 27
Everyone was talking at once.
“We need to talk to the Nats on the Board,” Michael said. “One of them has to know more about Agent S and how we can use it to get the murderer.”
“If I had a computer,” Smith said wistfully, “I might be able to be useful.”
“One computer, coming right up,” Yutika said, reaching for her sketchpad.
Michael put out a hand to stop her. Yutika frowned, glanced up, and noticed the way Smith and his father were looking at each other. They seemed to be having some kind of silent battle.
Older Smith looked ill, but he gave his son the smallest of nods.
We all waited while Yutika brought a new laptop into being. As soon as it was done, she passed it over to Smith.
The screen’s light looked harsh in the lantern-lit kitchen. Older Smith paced around the kitchen several times, before muttering to himself and leaving the room. A few seconds later, the back door slammed.
Smith just focused on his computer, giving no indication of what he was thinking.
He didn’t touch the sleek-looking laptop on the table in front of him, but windows opened and closed on the screen so fast I couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of anything.
“Holy shit,” Smith whispered, so quietly that his voice was almost lost.
“Did you figure out what our murderer wants with the Magical Reduction Potion?” Bri asked, her eyes bright with hope.
“No, but it looks like we’re about to find out.” He looked up from his screen. “The killer just triggered one of my digital traps.”
It seemed like no one breathed in the moments it took for Smith to reveal what he knew.
“You know that Nat Board member who has been in New Hampshire?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “I set a digital trail to make it look like she’s been busy around town. I replicated her credit card, and then I used simple graphic design and some facial recognition crap the US government was working on a while back. I made it seem like she checked into a hostel in Southie with excellent security cameras.” He smiled grimly. “Looks like our murderer finally came sniffing after my breadcrumbs.”
Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set Page 50
