Race of Thieves

by S. M. Reine

  She wasn’t a stranger after all. It was his ex-girlfriend, Brigid Byrne.

  “Oh shit,” Cage said.

  Her eyes fell on him, and the gentle swirl of galaxy turned to a flash of rage. “Shatter,” she snarled.

  He didn’t even try to get away when she brought the hilt of the sword down on his head. He blacked out and the world was dark.

  Chapter Six

  Cage returned to consciousness with Vex muttering over the Link and an ache in his neck. He’d been asleep a long time. One good whack from a sword couldn’t have done that. Brigid must have drugged Cage to keep him unconscious long enough to relocate his body.

  He was in a motel room in the guts of Phaethon Bay, probably only a few blocks from Gutterman’s warehouse. Nighttime was inky beyond the window. It felt like there were a thousand eyes staring at Cage through the glass.

  The bed underneath him felt like it was made out of concrete, but he couldn’t shift to get comfortable. He’d been hog-tied, and the drugs kept him weak. “Vex?” Cage croaked. There was no point trying to be quiet. Brigid would have noticed Vision following her.

  “Oh, thank the gods you’re all right!” Vision rose from the side of the bed, swooping over the pillow. “What did she do to you? Do you have your wallet? Your kidneys?”

  “Hello, Anton.”

  Brigid Byrne stood in the doorway with her arms folded. She talked like her mouth was full of cotton balls. Just a little bit muffled, a little hard to understand. She had suffered hearing loss and a jaw injury as a teenager, resulting in permanent damage. He was surprised she’d been able to hide her normal voice when they’d briefly spoken in the shrine.

  Vex couldn’t respond directly to Brigid, so he said, “Tell her I said hello, it’s nice to see her looking so well, and also that she’s a giant raging bitch who needs to let you go before I slash her tires.”

  Cage laughed. “I’m not telling her any such thing.”

  Brigid jerked the curtains shut, blotting out the black night of Phaethon Bay’s city floor. “I want privacy.” Her fingers closed around Vision.

  “Hey! Let him go!” Cage thrashed, but only managed to flop over the side of the bed and smash against the floor. There were so many stains on the carpet. It smelled like toes.

  Brigid cradled Vision in the crook of her elbow, stroking a finger over the fake eyelashes affixed to the upper lid.

  “If you hurt Vision…” Cage tried to look intimidating from the floor, flopping around like a baby that couldn’t crawl. “What did you do to me?” The ropes weren’t even tight. He could get his arms out by wiggling, but he still couldn’t muster the strength to stand.

  “I poisoned you,” she said.

  No surprises there. Brigid was good at three things: planeswalking, poisons, and ruining Cage’s life.

  The planeswalking was why her eyes always looked like stars at the heart of galaxies. Anywhere the ley lines went, Brigid could too, whether the planes beyond be occupied by angels or demons or a gaean species.

  That rare gift had helped her get plucked from a working-class family and sent to the Academy in Northgate. There, she had attended school with some of the richest families in the world, including the daughters of the Oracles and the last werewolf Alpha’s family. She could have used that special education to do anything. Just transporting people around the dimensions was a million-dollar job.

  Instead, Brigid had gotten into thievery.

  “I would never hurt Vision. I know that Anton feels what his disembodied appendages feel, and I’ve got nothing against him.” Brigid dropped Vision into a velvet sack and cinched it shut. Vex’s muffled voice complained through the Link. “Ameria is thirsting for Anton anyway. She wouldn’t forgive me for hurting her guy.” Ameria was Brigid’s version of Vex. Most thieves had technical support that stayed back on cases to offer additional intel.

  “Vex isn’t Ameria’s guy,” Cage said. “He’s already got a girlfriend. He’s been dating her for months through Venus Fly.”

  Brigid looked disappointed. “Ameria is going to be so sad to hear that.” She kneeled beside Cage and began rewrapping the ropes.

  “No! Stop that!”

  Brigid tied him quickly, with practiced hands. Her hair swung over her shoulder and bathed him in the scent of violets. “Pretend that you are me. Pretend that you thought to attack me first, and I was at your mercy. Would you let me go so that I could win Silverclaw’s job instead of you?”

  He spluttered. “Well—no—but that’s because I want the Silverclaw job more than anybody in the world. You know how I feel about him.”

  “Even your fannish obsession doesn’t outweigh my drive to get paid. His cult is the biggest in the world, and I’m going to get my cut.”

  “Do you really want that job if you don’t win it fair and square?” Cage tried to sound reasonable with his cheek smashed into the floor. “Wouldn’t you feel guilty, in retrospect?”

  “I could kill you and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.”

  Okay, Cage needed to try a different tactic. The ropes were only getting tighter. He was already losing circulation in his left pinky finger. The squirrel in his brain was going totally wild, scrabbling against the insides of his skull. “Tying me up—this isn’t like you.”

  “It’s exactly like me,” Brigid said.

  “I mean, it’s not smart. You know I’m a phoenix.” He let his voice get hard. “I can burn through anything that tries to hold me, including these ropes. I can even burn you to death if I must.”

  “The ropes are fireproof. And you would never deliberately hurt me, Shatter. On our third date, I mentioned that my lease was expiring and you asked if I wanted to move in with you.‬”‬

  “That was before I knew that your veins flow with evil juice, not from concentrate. Why are you even here?”

  “I selected this motel because it’s known for less than legal activity. You can make all the noise you want, and nobody is going to respond.”

  “First of all, you terrify me,” Cage said. “Second of all, what I actually meant was, why are you on the West Coast?” Brigid was a New Yorker to her core. The kind of woman who wore a blazer to champagne brunch on Sundays and spent her nights watching standup before going to steal something from the Met. The sprawling, casual atmosphere of the West did not suit her.

  That difference in personalities was why they had broken up last time.

  Also, because Brigid once literally stabbed him in the back with a syringe of poison, because she wanted to steal an artifact from him before he could sell it.

  “I came here at Ameria’s request,” Brigid admitted. “Her aging grandma lives out this way. I don’t have time to train a new assistant, so retaining her is a priority.” Brigid looked human when she was talking about her assistant. Not because she liked Ameria—Cage wasn’t convinced that Brigid liked anybody—but because Brigid was, above all else, a professional. She took care of her employees.

  She might never be friends with Ameria, even to the point that they could go for drinks after a successful heist, but she would relocate her business if it meant Ameria's quality of life was higher.

  When she looked like this, memories roared through Cage, turning his blood to fire as if he were really a phoenix.

  Long nights under the stars on the hood of her car.

  Money split after liberating an entire dance club’s worth of patrons of their wallets.

  That one time Cage helped Brigid steal a famous painting, and then set fire to it because she crossed him.

  Okay, the last wasn’t exactly a happy memory. But that was what it meant to be Cage and Brigid. It was the push and pull. He burned paintings, and she hog-tied him in grimy hotel rooms, but they always came back to each other.

  “Stop,” Brigid said.

  He blinked, snapping out of his reverie. “Stop what?”

  “Stop looking at me as though we’re in love.” She trailed a finger down the bridge of his nose, let it slide over his lips, and
then continued the line down his chest. She’d taken off his shirt before tying him up. His pants too. The fact she left him underwear was a generous gesture.

  That didn’t keep her finger from trailing down the front of his boxers. His stupid erection had started stiffening when her boobs hung over his face as she cinched the ropes. “I’m only looking at you like this to throw you off guard before I set you on fire,” Cage said. “It’s working. The fire comes next.”

  Brigid’s hand traveled north, this time using her fingernails. She raked them over the swell in his underwear.

  He hissed, head jerking back, the muscles in his neck tightening.

  She knew exactly how hard to press. She knew exactly what Cage liked, and when, and for how long.

  Her galaxy eyes had turned to a slow broiling pit of magma. Brigid was almost as pale as Cage, so even the slightest flush painted her pink from cleavage to forehead.

  She was thinking about inflicting pain on Cage. Thinking about it real hard.

  “My safe word is still tugboat,” Cage said.

  Her hand fell away. “I told you that this can’t happen. You’re bad for me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not saying you’re a bad boy. You are definitely not a bad boy.”

  “No, I’m bad for you like a jelly doughnut, and you want to lick my jelly off your fingers.” He arched a sultry brow at her.

  Brigid cringed. “That will never turn me on. Please don’t try to dirty talk.”

  “Why? Because I’m a bad boy who needs to be told what to do?”

  She finally dissolved into laughter. She forgot to hold her mask as tight when she was laughing, and he loved watching the swirl of light within her irises.

  She recovered faster than she used to. Their years apart had only served to make Brigid harder, colder, more calculating. The woman could access any point in the universe by walking between planes, but there was this whole other universe inside of her that Cage couldn’t reach.

  “Fireproof rope or not,” Cage said, “you can’t hold me forever.”

  She bent to kiss him. Her lips tasted like cherries soaked in alcohol, and her tongue flicked against his teeth as she said, “I don’t need to hold you forever. Just long enough for you to miss the window.”

  His heart leapt, pounding in his chest like the pistons in the cooling system underneath the Helios Tether. “What window?”

  Brigid stood. He tried to look up, to track her features. His blurry vision was darkening. The taste of burning cherry intensified as she moved away.

  He ran his tongue over his own lips. They were a little bit…chalky.

  “Dammit,” Cage said. “You put on poison lipstick again.”

  She didn’t dignify that with an answer. Of course, if she had, he wouldn’t have heard it. The poison sucked him into unconsciousness. He went back to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Cage was awake again by the time the door slammed. “Vex,” he groaned, rolling over onto his face. The carpet still smelled like toes, but now the inside of his mouth tasted like belly button lint too. “Vex!”

  Vision thumped around inside of the velvet bag, but Vex couldn’t respond, even with a muffled voice. Brigid must have removed Cage’s link.

  Cage inchwormed his way across the motel room floor to see around the foot of the bed.

  Brigid was gone.

  He licked his lips and spat on the floor. “If you can hear me, Vex, consider this my ‘I told you so.’ You told me it was crazy to wear anti-poison-lipstick lipstick for the last four years straight. You told me that I was wasting thousands of dollars hoping to be kissed by a woman who wants to kill me. Well, joke’s on you, Vex! This anti-poison-lipstick lipstick just saved the job!”

  Cage still had enough poison in his system that he shapeshifted slowly. His size was the second thing to change. The first thing was that he got very, very furry inside of the ropes, which made them squeeze too tight around his body. Brigid had tied him up good. If she’d known that his form was actually smaller than a mastiff’s, she probably would have tied him in a much scarier way.

  Finally, the ropes relaxed, and Cage managed to squirm free. He switched back to human as soon as he could escape.

  Cage stumbled to the bag and extracted Vision. The eyeball’s lashes were bent, and there was no mistaking the lid’s slant for anything but anger. The Link was in the bag too—he slapped it on to the back of his neck again. “—bitch, and if you don’t let him go, I’m going to—” Vex roared over the link.

  “I’m free,” Cage said.

  “Oh, thank the gods. It’s because of the anti-poison-lipstick lipstick that you’re wearing, isn’t it? You were right! You told me so!” Vex said.

  Cage had told him so. “Did you hear her thing about the window? What window?”

  “Get a load of this! Both times you were unconscious today, I did additional research into the dossier from Kleio Vincero. Shadowhold? In Barcelona? It’s really difficult to get into, even when you’re allowed to visit. The ley lines around it have been bent so that Brigid won’t be able to planeswalk inside.”

  “That’s lucky.” Cage gently nudged Vision, still looking rumpled and offended, onto the mattress so that he could get dressed.

  “The only way to get into Shadowhold is on an Open Day. There’s one Open Day a month. They open the door twice. If you go in on a visitor’s pass in the morning, you have to leave in the evening. If you enter in the evening, you’re stuck for a month.”

  “When’s the next Open Day?” Cage asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Vex said.

  Cage swore and swung a kick at the pile of ropes. “Can you charter a flight for me?” Hiring a planeswalker would be much too expensive, but maybe he could settle for coach. “Use the five thousand northcoins that Silverclaw Cult gave us for expenses.”

  “The credit card company already got to it,” Vex said.

  Cage swore again. He yanked off all of the clothes that he had been putting on.

  “You look great,” Vex said. “Have you been working out? Your shoulders look wider.”

  Cage stood up a little straighter. “As a matter of fact… Wait, we don’t have time to admire my perfect body. If there’s no flight to Barcelona, then there’s only one way for us to get there in time for Open Day.”

  “This is a bad idea,” Vex said.

  “You don’t know what my idea is yet.”

  “You’re going to hitchhike on Brigid.”

  “Okay, so you do know what my idea is, and it’s probably bad,” Cage said. “But it’s also the only plan I’ve got.”

  “Visitor passes to Shadowhold are expensive and few, and they’re already sold out for tomorrow’s Open Day. Even if you manage to hitchhike on Brigid without getting caught, you’re not going to be able to get inside.”

  That was a detail Cage would have to work out once he reached Barcelona. “I’ll be back as soon as possible. Emil’s taking care of the Museum—he’s not far away. Hit him up if you need anything.”

  He shapeshifted again before Vex could protest.

  This time, Cage went all the way into his squirrel, leaving the Link on the floor. Vision zoomed over and caught it on the magnet at the bottom of his ocular nerve. The fewer of those they had to replace, the better. Apparently Gutterman wasn’t their only debt-holder out for blood.

  Cage hurled himself at the motel room’s window. It shattered under the weight of his oversized squirrel body, and he slipped easily through the bars. The wards were meant to keep things out, not keep them inside. He landed on the pavement unscathed.

  The world was so much bigger when Cage was a squirrel. The freeways were so far above his head that his squirrel eyes could barely make them out, and his squirrel brain certainly didn’t care what was happening that far away. It took a lot of conviction from his human half to get the squirrel to turn and look for Brigid.

  He spotted the flash of her electric blue wig around the corner. She was only a few m
eters from the ley line.

  Ley lines were invisible threads that wrapped throughout every plane. Some had more than others—gaean planes had the most, whereas ethereal planes had the fewest—but you could find them anywhere.

  The ley lines in Phaethon Bay didn’t need to be searched for. The Ethereal Coalition had built elaborate terminals where travelers could arrive and depart safely. Their most common use was by rich people meeting planeswalkers for hire, helping them leap across the globe.

  If Cage didn’t get to Brigid before she reached the station, he would not be able to follow her to Barcelona.

  He put on a burst of speed. He raced with all his squirrel fury across the pavement.

  Inky demons swirled around him in a fog, unable to hurt a shifter in his animal form. He leapt onto the nearest fire escape—which was caked in so much rust and sulfur that he figured no human had used it in a decade—and Cage used that to race ahead of Brigid.

  Just when she was about to pass through the crystal gateway to the terminal, Cage jumped.

  Brigid was wearing one of those big hiking backpacks. His claws sunk into the rayon, and Brigid swung around to look at who had bumped into her. She didn’t see Cage. He had scrambled underneath the rain fly, forming a tight ball behind her head.

  She paused where she stood, eyes sweeping the street. Her sword had found its way into her hand, even though Cage knew for a fact that Brigid had no idea how to actually use a sword. It was just meant to make her look scary. Which it did. Even watching through that tiny slit under the rain fly, the sight of her fists clenched around the hilt sent a thrill of trepidation and arousal through him.

  Cage needed to hide better. If she moved wrong, she’d feel his furry body on the back of her head.

  He quietly unzipped her bag and dropped a few unimportant things she’d packed. Ropes, hooks, and a nylon bag hit the grass silently, all while Brigid was looking for a more distant threat.

  When nothing obvious happened, Brigid walked at a hasty clip to the terminal.