I could have thrown him off. Instead, I froze.
I couldn’t see him, but I felt every place where his body pressed against mine. His warm breath fanned across my cheek. I smelled cinnamon and sweat.
“Lose the titanium,” he said in a soft voice, his lips brushing my ear. “You’d enjoy this so much more if you could really feel me.”
I didn’t get hot or cold when I was titanium, and yet, a shiver went through me. Clearly, it had been a while since I’d been pressed up against a man.
“Ass,” I told him.
I struck out with my fist and connected. The man slumped to the ground.
Two things happened at once. My friends burst through the hole in the wall. And the man on the floor lost his camouflage.
“Ohmygod,” Yutika gasped, clutching her chest. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said. I was breathing hard, too. It was something that rarely happened to me when I was titanium.
“Who in the world is this guy?” A.J. asked, bending over to inspect the man on the floor.
I stared down at my attacker, getting my first glimpse of the Chameleon without his magic.
His golden-brown skin and dark, wavy hair spoke to Latino heritage. He had the shadow of a beard that couldn’t mask the damage I’d done to his cheek and jaw. Blood trickled across skin that was already swollen and bruising.
I would have called him rugged, except his eyelashes were too long and his lips too full. His biceps swelled against the sleeves of his black T-shirt. The torn part of his shirt exposed a serious set of abs.
Damn.
I dragged my gaze away from his stomach. That was when I noticed his arms. I froze. The Chameleon’s arms were covered in tattoos. There was more ink than skin. As I looked closer, I realized they weren’t random designs as they first appeared. They were numbers.
The numbers overlapped and serpentined all the way from his wrist to his shirt sleeve. Feeling odd, I bent and shoved up one of his sleeves.
The tattoos went all the way to the tops of his shoulders.
A.J. crouched beside the unconscious man and started snapping pictures with his phone.
“Don’t bother,” Smith told A.J., staring in wonder at his computer screen. “I already know what they are.”
We all turned to Smith.
“They’re the IDs of every one of the Super Mags from MagLab.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Also,” Yutika said, “what was he doing here?”
“Same thing as us, no doubt,” Smith said. “The better question is, how did he know what to look for?”
I thought again about the cinnamon gum wrapper at the empty grave. Whoever this man was, he knew about Agent S. That made him even more dangerous than his strange magic.
“We could take him with us and have Michael make him sing,” Yutika suggested.
We all looked down at the man. He was out cold.
“Or we can just let the cops have him when they show up,” Smith said. “It’ll give the police someone to pin the break-in on, and it’ll keep him out of our way.”
“Good thinking.” I nodded. “If he tries to point the finger at us, we’ll just deny we were ever here.”
“Our word against his,” Yutika said.
I crouched down to yank the envelope out of the waistband of the man’s jeans. For a second, I wondered if he had put the envelope there deliberately to mess with me. Rolling my eyes at the unconscious man, I stuffed both halves of the envelope into my pocket.
Then, just for good measure, I grabbed a fireplace poker I’d noticed amid the mess we’d made of Pruwist’s house. I bent the metal so it held the serpentine unconscious Chameleon’s ankles together, just on the off chance he woke up before the cops arrived. Catching on, Yutika made a pair of actual handcuffs, which I took no small amount of pleasure in locking.
Good luck getting out of those, buddy.
“I’m just going to come right out and say it,” A.J. said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “This one’s a cutie patootie.”
“Eyelashes like that should be illegal,” Yutika agreed.
“He was trying to kill me,” I reminded them.
“True.” A.J. shrugged. “But that doesn’t detract from his cuteness.”
“He’s more than cute,” Yutika said. “He’s seriously sexy.” She thought for a minute. “I’m going to call him Sexy Cinnamon Man.”
I was feeling increasingly disturbed by the direction this conversation was headed, not least of which because we were standing over the man’s unconscious body and debating his hotness.
“You know,” Smith said to Yutika. “If I started naming women Sexy This or Sexy That, you’d call me sexist.”
“Ooh.” Yutika nudged him. “You think Starlight is sexy, don’t you? Do you want to start calling her Sexy Starlight?”
“That is not the point I was trying to make,” Smith said, color rising in his pale cheeks.
The blare of sirens ended their argument.
“Time to go, folks,” A.J. said, foregoing the front door and using the man-sized hole in the wall as an exit.
The rest of us hurried after him.
Once we were outside the house, it became obvious how much damage Cinnamon Guy—I refused to call him Sexy Cinnamon Man—and I had done. There was a giant hole in one side of the house. The roof was partially collapsed, which I didn’t even remember happening. Dust was leaking out of the various holes we’d punched through the walls. And the chimney was smoking for no reason I could fathom.
What a mess.
I blew on my fists as we sprinted back to the van. If there were any witnesses around, I didn’t want to make their job of identifying us easier by showing off my titanium skin.
“I killed the security cameras,” Smith said as we ran. “It’ll be like we were never here.”
We were just pulling out of the parking lot when a fleet of police cars streamed past.
“That was a close one,” A.J. said, fanning his face and tossing his shiny black hair.
“I’d like to see Sexy Cinnamon Man’s face when he wakes up in police custody,” Yutika said, craning her neck to watch the police cars as she drove.
“Yutika, focus.” I pointed to the road in front of her.
Yutika wasn’t the best driver when she was fully focused. She kept weaseling her way into the driver’s seat by claiming she wanted to improve her skills…or lack thereof. I thought the real reason was because she enjoyed making all of us car sick.
“I can’t find any records for a high-level Chameleon,” Smith said, frowning at his computer. “I’ll do a deeper search when we get home.”
“Another unMarked Mag?” A.J. waved his hand. “What a cliché.”
I turned on the overhead light and drew out the two envelope halves. The first half contained a single slip of paper. A GPS coordinate was hand-written across the page.
The tear mark at the bottom showed a pen line that had been cut off when the paper was torn.
I reached inside the envelope half I’d taken from Cinnamon Guy for the other half of the paper. My gut turned to stone.
The envelope was empty.
CHAPTER 10
Nothing,” Smith said, pulling out his earbuds. “The cops have been all through the house and didn’t say a word about the Chameleon.”
“He must have woken up in time to camouflage himself,” A.J. said.
“We left him in front of the front door,” I seethed. “The cops would have tripped right over him whether he was camouflaged or not.”
A.J. gave me a helpless shrug.
“I can guarantee he wasn’t walking anywhere with that metal poker around his ankles,” Yutika said.
I paced around Kaira and Graysen’s study. My fury was a hot, living thing inside me. It didn’t matter how the Chameleon had gotten away. The point was, he was gone…and he’d taken the information I needed.
The Chameleon must have taken the slip of paper out of the envelope and stashed it somewhere else. Probably in his underwear, the bastard.
“Stop blaming yourself,” Kaira told me in a stern voice.
“If I’d gotten the envelope away from him sooner,” I fumed, “we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
All of the could’ves and should’ves were racing around my brain in an endless loop. I wanted to scream. I wanted another chance to bash Cinnamon Guy’s brains in.
“Cut yourself some slack,” Graysen said. “This is a crazy situation no one could have anticipated.”
I shook my head. It was precisely my job not to get thrown off by the unexpected. I could have taken Cinnamon Guy faster, if I hadn’t been distracted by his obnoxious goading. If only I’d opened the envelope sooner, I would have realized what he’d done.
Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.
“The obvious first step is to start with the information we do have,” Graysen said. “Smith?”
“GPS coordinate for a location in southern California,” Smith said without looking up from his computer. “Satellite images aren’t showing anything suspicious at that location. Just looks like uninhabited desert.”
“We’d better go there and check it out, anyway,” Kaira said.
A.J.’s face blanched. I tried to catch his eye, but he was staring at his shoes.
A.J. was from California, and I knew he didn’t have happy memories of his life there. As close as we were, he’d never said much about the first sixteen years of his life before he came to Boston.
For as much as A.J. fake-complained, he was quiet about the things that bothered him the most.
It was something we had in common.
“Let’s go in the morning,” Yutika said, yawning. “The late morning. I’ll handle our transportation.”
Kaira nodded. “And we’re going to need to track down the other half of this.” She held up the torn page between her fingers.
I inwardly cursed myself again.
“I can’t find anything on this Chameleon,” Smith said.
“Sexy Cinnamon Man,” Yutika corrected.
Kaira raised an eyebrow. I just shook my head.
“Like nothing,” Smith continued. “He’s not just unMarked…it’s like he doesn’t exist.”
I started a rep of jumping jacks, because if I didn’t, I was liable to bash my head through a wall.
And I’d already done that once tonight.
“I have an idea,” Graysen said, taking the useless envelope half off the desk where I’d tossed it. “Come on.”
We all followed him into the dining room. The Super Mags who had attacked Valencia and killed eight of her Nat followers were sitting at the table. Michael and the Hansley clan were interspersed among them. Each of the kids had a mug of hot chocolate in front of them. There were also mostly-empty bowls of mini-marshmallows, tiny chocolate chips, and homemade whipped cream.
Michael was speaking in a quiet voice to two of the kids. From their unglazed eyes, I knew he wasn’t Whispering to them. Still, their expressions were quietly attentive in a way I knew they wouldn’t be with anyone else.
Cora was reading Charlotte’s Web out loud to a few of the youngest kids. Desiree was playing a card game with another. Ma was refilling mugs, and Grandma Tashi was presiding over all of them at the head of the table.
Looking at the Super Mags like this, they seemed more like regular children than the most powerful and deadly Mags in the world.
“00466,” Graysen said.
The little girl sitting next to Cora glanced up. She returned Graysen’s warm smile with a shy one of her own.
00466 was an Animalist and the sweetest of the Super Mags. She’d helped us during the Boston Enforcement Party and had been one of the few Super Mags to keep in contact with Kaira and Graysen after the magic ripper started going after them. The shocking gold color of her eyes was the same as the lion who had helped me at the baseball game.
I gave her a friendly wink that had her grinning back.
Graysen held up the piece of envelope in his hand. “I was wondering if you and Sir Zachary might be able to help us with something,” he said to the little girl.
“What does Sir Zachary have to do with it?” A.J. demanded, speaking for the first time since the word California had been mentioned.
00466 was different from most Animalists. Not only could she communicate with any animal, she could also transform into them. All at once, I had an inkling about what Graysen was thinking.
“You should all give yourselves real names,” Desiree said in a loud voice, making it clear her statement trumped all other conversations.
“Desiree’s right,” Graysen said, unoffended by the interruption.
The Animalist looked at the other Super Mags around the table, like she was waiting for permission.
“What name should I pick?” the little girl asked.
“Any name you want,” Kaira said encouragingly.
The Super Mag’s gaze went to the book in Cora’s hands.
“I like Charlotte,” she said shyly.
“That’s a great name,” Kaira said, bending down so she was at the child’s level. As she and Graysen congratulated Charlotte on her choice of a name, I had a startling image of them as parents. They were only a couple of years older than me, but something about them seemed so much more mature.
I guessed it made sense. After everything they’d been through together, and living with the constant fear of being caught and executed, they must have been forced to grow up early.
Their situation was completely different from what I’d gone through with my family five years ago, and yet, the effect had been similar. It felt like I’d transformed from a carefree kid to an adult overnight.
“What do you need help with?” the Animalist—Charlotte—asked. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the other Super Mags, who were buzzing with excitement over their own choice of names.
“Do you think you and Sir Zachary can track someone down for us?” Graysen asked. “We don’t have much to go on, except this.” He handed her the envelope.
Charlotte took the envelope between her delicate fingers. Then, the little girl was gone. The envelope fell onto the table as a rust-colored moth fluttered above it.
The moth’s furry antennae twitched as its little legs settled onto the envelope.
“Why a moth?” Graysen asked no one in particular.
“Silk moths have excellent pheromone receptors,” Smith said, reading off his laptop screen. “And I imagine it was a more practical choice than an African elephant or great white shark, both of which also have great noses.”
“Goodness,” Ma said, pressing a hand to her heart.
“This family just gets weirder and weirder,” Desiree said with a self-sacrificing sigh.
“Normal is overrated.” Kaira leaned her head on Graysen’s shoulder.
I was still trying to decide if the moth was more cute or gross, when the moth transformed into a small, black dog. Yutika jumped when the dog let out a bark that was way too loud for its small frame.
Sir Zachary’s answering bark came a second later. His nails skidded on the tile as he ran into the room.
The two dogs faced each other, whining and wagging their tails. Using the chair as a launching point, Sir Zachary leapt onto the table and sniffed the envelope.
“You get your grimy paws off the tablecloth,” Grandma Tashi ordered the two dogs, who were snuffling at the envelope.
Apparently, Grandma Tashi was as intimidating to dogs as she was to humans. Both dogs let out little whimpers and jumped back to the floor.
More dog talk ensued.
“I wish I had that kind of magic,” A.J. said longingly.
“Being able to move objects with your mind is plenty cool,” I assured him.
Charlotte reappeared as a little girl, crouching on the floor. I didn’t know how it worked, but she was fully clothed, even though her outfit ha
d disappeared when she was in animal form.
“We might be able to track him,” Charlotte said uncertainly, brushing her fingers over the envelope. “The scent is really faint, though.”
Before hopelessness could ensue, an idea struck me.
“One sec,” I said, already running for the stairs.
I found what I was looking for at the top of my waste basket in my bedroom.
Good thing taking out the trash was perpetually at the bottom of my to-do list.
I raced back to the kitchen and handed Charlotte the gum wrapper Cinnamon Guy had left at the grave.
“Could you use this to track him?” I asked the little girl.
She took the wrapper and sniffed it. She wrinkled her nose.
“Whew, that’s strong.”
Charlotte offered the gum wrapper to Sir Zachary, who touched his nose to the paper. He sneezed.
“The man we’re searching for chews this gum,” I said, looking from Charlotte to Sir Zachary, since it seemed wrong to exclude our dog from the conversation. “He smells like it.”
I knew it was a stretch, since Cinnamon Guy couldn’t be the only person in Boston who chewed that gum. Still, it was something.
Dog and girl conferred. Then, Charlotte nodded.
“We’ll do our best.” She turned to one of the other Super Mags at the table. “That is, if it’s okay with you.”
I bristled at the way she was asking a boy for permission.
“00391 is the Super Mags’ new leader, Kaira explained to me in a low voice. “He replaced the Pyro.”
The boy in question was only twelve years old. With his twiggy arms and shaggy hair, he certainly didn’t look like a leader. Then again, as I knew only too well, looks could be deceiving.
I remembered from our previous meetings and the files I’d memorized, that 00391 was a Level 16 Memory Reader and Level 14 Intellect. He acted and spoke more like an adult than a child, thanks to his Intellect magic. He was also on friendly terms with Graysen and trusted us more than the other Super Mags. Since he could see into our memories, 00391 knew how badly we all wanted to help them.
As a general rule, I avoided the kid. As nice as he was, I didn’t like reliving my own memories if I could help it. I certainly didn’t want anyone else mucking around in my mental black hole.
Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set Page 77
