“I’ll come,” Smith said.
When no one else moved to join us, I looked around the room. Cora and my friends were exchanging furtive glances that I didn’t know what to make of.
“Problem?” I asked.
“I need Graysen’s help studying,” Cora said, speaking so quickly her words blurred together. “And Yutika and Michael’s. And A.J.’s.”
“And I was so looking forward to more grave robbing,” A.J. said, plopping down next to Cora and letting out his best imitation of a self-sacrificing sigh.
Gray looked conflicted.
I narrowed my gaze at the group of them. Judging from their shifty-eyed expressions, they were clearly up to something. And unless I planned on using cruel and unusual torture, I didn’t think any of them would give up their secrets.
“It’s fine,” I told Gray, who seemed to be the only one who was concerned. “We won’t get into any trouble, and we’ll be back soon.”
Famous last words.
“Bring Sir Zachary, at least,” Gray said, still looking uncertain. “And promise you won’t go looking for Subject 6 until we’re all together.”
“We can’t do anything about Subject 6 until we can figure out what to do with his mind-melding ability,” Bri said with a little shudder. “I won’t let myself become a weapon against you again.”
“We’ll be careful,” I promised. “See you in a few hours.”
✽✽✽
It took longer to get out of the house than I’d been anticipating. Yutika needed to create shovels for us to dig up the graves. Then, she’d made new security-enhanced and Smith-approved phones for all of us so we could stay in touch for the short time we’d be apart.
I was also a little distracted by the secret looks my friends kept exchanging, and which they vehemently denied whenever I called them out on it.
I was about to lose it from all the fake coughs, glances, and whispers. By the time we finally made it out of the house, it was late afternoon.
We drove mostly in silence, except for when Smith gave me directions or announced that he was taking control of the traffic lights to make our ride smoother.
We had almost reached the cemetery where Lilly Hammond was buried…or not…when Bri spoke.
“I could never bring myself to visit her grave.” She stared out the window. “I don’t know why. I wasn’t in denial about her death or anything. I just…didn’t want to see her name on that stone.”
I parked and turned to face her. “We can start with one of the other graves. We don’t have to go to Lilly’s.”
I had no idea what we were going to find. The layout of these graves around the burnt remains of MagLab was the only connection we had between our list of supposed DAMND victims and the Magical Reduction Potion. And since MagLab was gone, I imagined any other clues we might have found had burned down with the building.
“No,” Bri said. “I want to see it.”
Smith, clearly disturbed by the possibility of tears, stayed several steps behind us as we made the short walk along the cemetery’s gravel path. The only sounds were the crunch of our shoes on the gravel, and the clunk of the shovels Bri and I were carrying like walking sticks.
The air still smelled like smoke from the fire, even though MagLab was over a mile away.
I looped my arm through Bri’s as the headstone came into view. I silently read the words carved into the stone surface.
Lilly Hammond, 2065-2065. Beloved daughter.
All at once, it occurred to me what a monumentally terrible idea it was to dig up Lilly’s grave. We were defiling the space, even if Lilly’s body wasn’t inside.
“Bri—” I began.
“No,” she said, almost harshly. “I need to do this. I need to know.”
So, we began to dig. Smith didn’t really help because he refused to abandon his laptops for more than thirty seconds at a time. Even though my shoulders burned from all the shoveling, my efforts were downright puny compared to the powerful way Bri’s titanium arms moved more dirt than I could have if I’d had twenty arms.
Bri’s shovel made the telltale thunk as it came up against the biohazard container. Clutching the container in one hand and her shovel in the other, Bri leapt out of the six-foot hole we’d made.
I was less graceful, scrabbling up the side and getting a shoe full of dirt for my trouble.
Bri let out a ragged breath. Then, before I could try to think of something comforting to say, she wrenched the container open.
It was empty.
The plastic-smelling interior was all the evidence we needed to know there’d never been a body inside. But that didn’t get us any closer to knowing how Lilly had actually died.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Bri said in a tiny voice.
“We’re missing something,” Smith said. He glared at his computers, like they might offer him the answer. He pulled his poison scanner out of his hoodie pocket. He flipped the switch and hovered it over the biohazard box.
Nothing.
“I don’t know what you expected,” Bri said. “It’s clear there was never anything inside this.”
No sooner had she finished speaking, the poison scanner let out a sad little bleep.
Smith had been hovering it over the bottom of the biohazard container. The light on the scanner’s tip flashed red once and then settled back down.
“Maybe it needs new batteries,” Bri suggested.
“It doesn’t run on batteries,” Smith replied irritably.
Frowning, he moved the scanner steadily along the bottom of the container. It gave a few more uncertain bleeps, and then went silent.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Broken,” Smith announced. “I’ve been meaning to have Yutika make me a new one, anyway.”
He tossed the scanner away from him, like the thing had offended him. It landed on the edge of Lilly’s grave, hovered for a second, and then rolled down the side of the hole we’d dug.
Smith gave Bri a guilty look. “Sorry—”
A deafening screech pierced the air.
The scanner was going as insane as it had when we found the vial of Agent S. Its wail was unending. When we peeked over the edge of the grave, we could see the red light was flashing.
Bri jumped down into the grave and tossed the scanner back to Smith. As soon as it was out of the grave, the scanner settled down.
“So, not broken?” I guessed, when my ears stopped ringing.
“There’s something down there,” Smith said.
Bri didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her shovel and jumped back into the grave.
“Stay up there,” Bri ordered me when I went to help. “Poison won’t hurt my titanium skin.”
“How exactly does this scanner of yours work?” I asked Smith.
Until recently, I hadn’t seen him use it on anything except his food, and I’d certainly never heard it go off.
“It’s complicated,” he said, which was his answer whenever he thought the rest of us were too simple to understand. The fact that he was probably right didn’t do anything to quell my irritation.
“There’s something down here!” Bri shouted.
When I peeked over the edge of the grave, I started. What had been a six-foot hole was now closer to ten feet deep.
Bri scampered up the side like a monkey and deposited a wooden crate on the ground in front of us.
The poison scanner went nuts.
“I think we’ve established that whatever is inside there is poison,” I shouted, keeping my palms slammed over my ears. “Shut it off!”
Smith did, just as Bri wrenched the lid off the crate.
Vials of glittery green Agent S were stacked neatly in the crate. As we stared, the vials began to move. Their glass exteriors clinked together as they jiggled around. Then, the vials shot out of the crate.
“What the—” Bri gasped.
The vials zoomed to her with so much speed the glass shattered on impact with her titanium
skin.
The gelatinous liquid slithered around on her arms like some kind of blobby lover. The substance twined around her biceps and rose up her neck. Tentacles of the stuff snaked up her cheeks.
“Ooh, stop it,” Bri said, wriggling around. “That tickles.”
Smith and I looked at each other. The Agent S was all over Bri and completely ignoring us. Frankly, I felt a little offended.
“The bottom of the biohazard container was closest to the crate,” Smith said pensively. “It probably got some trace amounts of the Agent S on it, which is what set off my scanner.”
“Fascinating,” Bri said. “How about you figure out how to get this stuff off me before it gets any friendlier?”
The green substance flashed in the sunlight as it curled under her shirt. There was a bulge around her calf as it oozed up her leg.
Bri was giggling and hopping up and down as she tried to free herself from the stuff. At least she didn’t seem to be in any danger…unless it was possible to be tickled to death.
I looked down at my own Agent S-free skin.
“It has to be the titanium,” I told her.
I lifted up my shovel and nudged at one of the green blobs, intending to scrape it off her skin.
The second the tip of my shovel touched the Agent S, the metal began to hiss and smoke. The Agent S ate away at the metal blade in seconds. Heat raced up the wooden handle, and I had to drop the shovel before my hand burned off.
The wooden part of the handle flared green. Then, it crumbled into black dust that scattered across the ground. The plastic handhold was all that was left. Bri gave it a tentative poke with her foot, and it crumbled into powder.
“Weird,” Bri said in an awed voice.
Weird, indeed.
Bri looked at the Agent S, still oozing and curling around her limbs like luminescent tattoos. She took a few steps away from us, and then she flicked at the green globs on her arm.
The Agent S sailed through the air, leaving a glowing trail like it was a comet. It hit the earth. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the ground began to glow green. The hard-packed dirt bubbled and fizzed. A stream of green, liquid mud boiled and oozed like magma.
If it hadn’t been for Smith and Bri’s curses and exclamations, I would have thought I was hallucinating.
The Agent S made a narrow fissure in the ground as it burned through the layers below. The three of us hovered several feet away as the Agent S carved through the earth.
The Agent S kept digging itself deeper until it was so far down its green glow was no longer visible. A thin hairline crack in the ground was the only evidence that the Agent S had been there at all.
“Stand back,” Bri ordered us. “I’m going to get rid of the rest of this stuff.
Smith and I didn’t need to be told twice.
Bri swatted, flicked, and slapped at herself until all of the Agent S left her body and found its way into the ground.
My eyes began to ache from watching the magma-like substance burn its way into the ground. It kept going, deeper and deeper, until all that was left were a few green sparkles that caught the sunlight. Then, those disappeared too.
The soil didn’t look wet or show any other sign that it had absorbed the Agent S. All that remained was a row of small holes cutting across the ground.
“That was intense,” Bri said, brushing off her arms. “What now?”
The three of us exchanged a look.
I shrugged. “On to the next grave, I guess.”
CHAPTER 43
It was dark by the time we got back to Older Smith’s house.
We’d dug up ten more graves and found the exact same as we had at Lilly’s: empty biohazard containers, and buried crates full of Agent S.
I had no idea what we were supposed to do with this new tidbit of information, and my mind churned with ways we might be able to use it to lure Subject 6 out into the open.
We had re-buried the crates in the graves where no one else would find them. There seemed to be no reason to move them until we decided whether or not we should destroy them.
Bri had been texting up a storm the whole ride back, and Smith was absorbed in his computers. I didn’t get suspicious until both of them chuckled at the same time.
“Are you two instant messaging each other?” I demanded.
“No,” they both replied at the same time.
I jerked to a stop in Older Smith’s driveway, getting some petty satisfaction out of seeing both of my friends lurch forward.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” I said, getting out of the car and heading for the house.
“Kaira, not that way!” Bri ran around and got in front of me, blocking my path.
“What’s going on?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Everyone had been acting so weird, and I wasn’t used to being left out.
Smith and Bri exchanged a look.
“Er, my dad’s doing some new security thing on the back door,” Smith said. “He wants us to go in the front.”
“Fine, whatever.”
My annoyance only grew when Smith and Bri didn’t follow me inside.
“We’re right behind you,” Bri said, even though they obviously weren’t.
Whatever.
I wanted to talk to Gray. Maybe he had some guesses about who was storing all this Agent S in empty graves and why.
My mind was so fixated on our newest mystery that I didn’t notice the house’s emptiness until I made it into the kitchen. It was dinnertime, and yet, Ma wasn’t in the kitchen. There were no plates set out on the table.
There was only a single lantern on the counter. It was totally, eerily quiet.
“Guys?” I asked, my voice coming out high as my nerves spiked. “Ma? Gray?”
No answer.
I headed for the stairs, wondering if everyone in the house had decided to skip dinner and go to bed early. It was doubtful, since it was way too early and skipping meals wasn’t a thing when Ma was around.
I barreled into A.J., who caught me at the top of the stairs.
“Easy, Girlfriend,” he said, letting me go and brushing off his immaculate lavender suit. “Where’s the fire?”
“You tell me,” I replied. “Where is everyone?”
“Never you mind,” A.J. replied, taking my hand and pulling me toward my bedroom. “Your job right now is to get beautiful.”
“Has everyone lost their minds completely?” I demanded. “Where’s Gray?”
“Busy,” A.J. replied vaguely. “Now, I laid out a dress on your bed. Bri will do your makeup after you shower, since I tend to be a little heavy-handed on the eyeliner.”
I rubbed my head. “A.J., if I need to look good for some reason that’s actually useful, I’ll just use illusion.”
“Stop arguing,” was his only reply as he shoved me into the bedroom and shut the door.
When I tried the handle, I found it was somehow locked from the outside.
“A.J.,” I growled.
“Tick tock, Girlfriend,” A.J. sing-songed. “If I don’t hear that shower on in ten seconds, I’m sending in Sir Zachary. You know what happens when he gets upset.”
I caught a glimpse of the dress waiting on my bed. It was a killer red number that would look absolutely amazing on me…and be absolutely inappropriate for whatever trouble we were bound to get into. Any sudden moves would put my boobs at risk of dislocating from the plunging neckline. The four-inch strappy black heels wouldn’t be conducive to either running from bad guys or chasing them.
“Are you done yet?” Bri called from outside my door.
Cursing, I went into the bathroom and started the shower. I had clearly lost control of this situation…whatever the situation was.
A short while later, I was primped to within an inch of my life. If A.J. or Bri had bothered to tell me what was going on, I might have enjoyed the experience. Instead, I was irritated almost past my breaking point. I’d had enough surprises lately.
“That is enoug
h.” I batted A.J.’s hand away as he spritzed me with a delicate jasmine perfume that was almost identical to the one I’d lost in our destroyed house.
“Do you think they’re ready?” Bri asked A.J.
“Ready for what?” I demanded.
A.J. ignored me and said to Bri, “They better be. This gasket is ready to blow.”
I stomped my foot on the floor. With my heels, it made a satisfying sound against the hardwood.
“If you don’t tell me what’s going on this second, I’m going to illusion both of you into trolls for a week.”
“She’ll do it, too.” Cora peeked around the half-open door and smiled. “You look so pretty, Kaira. You ready?”
“Ready for what?” I grated out.
Instead of answering, Cora gestured for me to follow her.
I grabbed my new Smith-approved phone off the nightstand and shoved it into the slim pocket on my hip, since God-only-knew what the rest of the night would bring. Then, I let Cora lead me to the end of the hall, where a set of stairs climbed up. I hadn’t even known there was another level to the house.
Cora gave me a little nudge, and said, “Good luck!” before scampering off.
Shaking my head, I started up.
The stairs were steep and narrow. There was a small hatch at the top. As soon as I pushed it open, I saw the stars and felt the kiss of the summer breeze. I climbed out and stepped into a fairytale.
White lights were strung up around the small rooftop terrace. The air smelled like the live jasmine—my favorite flower—that was growing all around the wrought iron balustrade. I knew Yutika must have created the flowers, since jasmine didn’t naturally grow in a climate like Boston.
I breathed in the intoxicating scent as I looked around. Lanterns had been spaced throughout the small oasis. When I glanced down, I realized I was standing on rose petals.
“Wow.”
Gray stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing a dark suit that accentuated his broad shoulders. His blue-green eyes cut through the dark as he swept an appreciative gaze over me.
“Gray, what’s going on?” I asked as he came to stand before me.
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