“The office called just before the blast.” Ryerson said the office casually, like it was a real estate office calling to remind him he had a showing in twenty minutes. “We got a credible tip that Merrick is holed up in a village a few hundred miles northeast of here.”
Tiago looked surprised, then nodded brusquely and waved a hand at the ruined café. “I’ll stay and deal with this. You two go.”
Ryerson nodded, as if this arrangement made perfect sense.
I whipped my head between them. “Wait, what? We’re going after the magic-toting terrorist who nearly killed us from a hundred miles away? You can’t be serious.”
They looked serious.
“Why can’t I stay at the safe house?” I was whining, but I didn’t care. This was a bad idea. A terrible, stupid, dangerous, awful idea.
“In a few minutes, this street will be teeming with people,” Tiago explained. “Someone needs to stay here to keep people away from the blast area and to make sure none of the emergency personnel find something they’re not prepared to deal with before our people get here.”
They were worried about another bomb. One that wasn’t detectable by whatever normal means the police have of detecting explosive devices.
“I can stay,” I offered. Better that than traipsing around the countryside, hunting a terrorist. I mean what if, goddess forbid, we actually found him?
Ryerson shook his head in that way that said he’d made up his mind, and that was that. My heart sank.
“You’re not an agent. Tiago will stay. I don’t have time to drop you at the safe house, and besides, I need you to tell me if you sense him, now that you know his magical signature.”
Did I though? I thought a little hysterically. Everything had happened so fast. I’d sensed magic, but I hadn’t paid much attention to what it felt like, what it smelled like, before everything went to hell. Rookie mistake.
“But—” I began, but no one was listening anymore. Tiago tossed his keys to Ryerson and then strode off to intercept the boldest onlookers who had ducked under the police tape. Then an ambulance, two fire trucks, and a fleet of police cars screamed to a stop on the other side of the tape.
“Come on.” Ryerson grabbed my hand and pulled me down a narrow alleyway between the buildings. He wove us through alleys and streets and even a small bakery, occasionally murmuring instructions like when to turn my head to avoid street cameras. He navigated the winding streets like he’d lived in this neighborhood all his life. Fifteen minutes later, we were buckled into Tiago’s Audi SUV and sailing down the motorway.
“Is this really necessary?” I asked for the third time since we’d reached the car. “I mean, aren’t there Navy SEALs who live for this sort of thing?”
Ryerson grunted. I sighed and looked out the window. We blew past a road sign. I don’t read Portuguese, but if I did and if European signage was at all accurate, I was pretty sure it would say, “Your Doom, 93 miles.”
Because Ryerson wasn’t what one might call a sparkling conversationalist and because I needed a distraction from the epic headache building behind my eyes and the way he insisted on hurtling us through the countryside toward our doom, I forced my thoughts back to the café.
The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Why would Merrick return to the scene and set a trap? For that matter, why blow it up in the first place? To kill Ryerson’s partner? Or was there another reason?
And why couldn’t I breathe back there?
I thought back to the only other time I’d used that spell. I was ten and riding my bike along a wooded trail, trying to keep up with Josh and Alec who had actual mountain bikes and were so far ahead of me that all I could see of them were the dust clouds swirling in their wake. Josh had been tasked with babysitting me while Dad was at work and Mom was at a luncheon, and he was doing a crap job of it. I’d pedaled faster and faster, certain that a mountain lion or a bear or an overly ambitious raccoon would jump out of the woods and attack me any second now. That’s when I hit the rock. My bike had flown off the path and down a steep incline. Any other day, Josh would have eventually found me flattened around a tree like Wile E. Coyote on a particularly crap day.
Except four days earlier, Aunt Belinda had pulled me out of school, brought me to her shop, and taught me the bubble rune. If it had a more formal name, I’d never learned it. It was advanced magic, especially for a young witch with a pretty average amount of power, like me. It took me three whole days to learn the spell. I tried to give up a dozen times, even threatened to tell Mom that Belinda kept pulling me out of school, but she was relentless. We practiced and practiced until it was ingrained in me like muscle memory, and then she let me go back to school with the worst headache of my life. The very next day, without that rune, I would be dead.
It was another two years before I learned that Aunt Belinda was prescient. Sort of.
I remembered Josh and Alec finding me and my broken bike at the bottom of a steep hill. Josh had alternated between asking if I was okay and begging me not to tell Mom, and Alec had been silent and white-faced. I remembered the way he’d run his hands through his hair, leaving it to stick up in blond spikes. I remembered the feel of his hands on my arms as he helped me up, the look of worry in his eyes as he asked me if I was okay. I remembered the way my stomach had fluttered for the first of hundreds of times as I met his eyes and nodded. And I remembered a splitting headache, much like the one pounding behind my eyes now, and being sick as a dog the next day.
I didn’t remember any invisible choking fingers.
I shuddered at the memory of those fingers. And then my thoughts shifted, inexplicably, to Ryerson’s attempt to save me. To his hands running over my body and then to his mouth settling over mine. My lips tingled at the memory, as if I could still feel the imprint of him there.
My hand moved to my lips. I realized where it was going, the traitor, a second before it reached them and slammed it back to my lap. Ryerson’s attention flicked to me and my cheeks flamed, although there was no way he could know what I’d been thinking about.
“I thought you said you didn’t have any defensive spells,” he said gruffly.
Grateful for the distraction from the weird U-turn my thoughts had taken, I said, “I said I don’t know any offensive spells. And you just saw the only defensive one that I know.”
“I thought you couldn’t call your magic when you were afraid.” His tone had turned suspicious.
“I can’t.” Usually.
He flicked me a glance and lifted an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “I didn’t think. I just acted. I guess I didn’t give myself a chance to feel afraid.”
He nodded, like that was something he understood. I shifted in my seat to look at him. He shot me a wary look.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said, and then didn’t give him a chance to say no. “Did you know an agent named Alexander Marcusi?”
Ryerson’s whole body tensed. His knuckles turned white where they gripped the steering wheel. He stared at the road, his jaw hard as granite.
Excitement shot down my spine. “So you did know him!” Maybe I’d get the answers I wanted about Alec’s death right here, right now. Once and for all.
“No,” he said, his voice hard. “I didn’t know Alexander Marcusi at all.”
10
Monsanto, Portugal
For a spy, Ryerson is a terrible liar.
And yet he persisted, for the next seventy-two miles, to tell me he didn’t know Alec. I didn’t give up until we left the motorway and drove through the countryside on a road carved through hilly, terraced vineyards, to a village stuffed with stone cottages and narrow cobblestone roads built around giant, mossy boulders, as though man and nature had come to a reluctant truce that they’d share the tiny village.
Ryerson maneuvered the SUV behind a flat stone building with a tiled shingle awning and a handmade wooden sign that read Taverna Raiano.
“We’re here,” he announced, sounding reli
eved about it. Like hunting terrorists was way easier than spending another minute in the car with me.
I waited in the car while he raided the duffel bag he’d stashed in the trunk. The one that was big enough to fit a dead body, except it clanged a lot. When he was done, he circled the car and opened my door.
“What are you doing?” he said on a sigh.
I was slouched so low in the seat that I couldn’t see out the windows. Which I figured meant anyone out there couldn’t see me either.
“Hiding,” I answered.
“Your plan is to wait in the car?”
“Yes.”
I expected an argument, but Ryerson just shrugged. “Okay. I’m sure no one will find a big black SUV parked in an otherwise empty lot suspicious and come to investigate.”
Curse it.
I climbed reluctantly out of the car and followed him across the parking lot, jogging to keep up with his long strides and feeling annoyed about it. Mostly because annoyed was infinitely preferable to the fear trying to root my feet to the pavement.
“Why is this Merrick guy holed up in a Portuguese village, anyway? Shouldn’t he be smuggling himself into North Korea or something?”
“Yes. Now be quiet.” We’d reached the edge of the building and Ryerson slowed, his gaze sweeping the empty street before he walked into it. “Tell me if you sense anything.”
I scowled at his stupid broad back and reached for my magic. If it was sluggish before, now it felt like dragging a dead body burritoed inside a wet rug across a field of sandpaper. I spent the next moment wondering if I should be worried that all of my metaphors now incorporated dead bodies, and then magic trickled into my fingertips. It wasn’t much, but my head pounded with the effort and sweat beaded along my forehead despite the cool ocean-scented breeze that swept through the street. It would have to do.
Ryerson had slowed enough that I could match his pace without running, and I stuck close to him as I let the magic trickle from my fingertips, stretching a few paltry yards in any direction. For my magic to sense something, it would have to be practically on top of us.
As we walked deeper into the quiet village, a sense of foreboding crawled up my spine.
“Ryerson?” I said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Where are all the people?”
It was early evening. Even in a sleepy village like this one, there should be people walking home from work or closing up their shops or heading out to dinner. We’d been walking for blocks and hadn’t seen a soul. But it was more than that. There’s a soundtrack to life in any community. Birds chirping, the rumble of car engines, dogs barking as we passed too close to their yards. Now, there was no sound except the crunch of our boots over the gritty cobblestones and the low whistle of the wind.
The look Ryerson flicked me wasn’t reassuring. “Stay close.”
If I got any closer, I’d be crawling up his back like a baby monkey. We pressed deeper into the village, and the hair along my arms prickled in warning.
“We should go,” I said.
“Do you feel something?”
“Besides a sense of doom?”
Ryerson shook his head. “You sound like Dahlia.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
He tapped his ear and kept walking. It took me a minute to see the earbud cupped inside, and then I stopped short.
“Dahlia told you we should abort?”
“Yes.”
“So why are we still here?”
Finally, he stopped walking and faced me. His eyes were dark and determined, his jaw firm. “Because I let Merrick escape once before. It won’t happen again.”
“But Dahlia—”
“Is not in charge of this op!” he growled. “It’s my call.”
“But—”
But Ryerson was already walking away. “Do what you want. I’m going to find him.”
I stared after him, hands clenched into fists at my sides. What was wrong with that man? My jaw was clenched so tightly it ached. Fine. I spun on my heel and began the long walk back to the car. He wanted to get himself killed? Fine by me.
Besides, I reasoned to myself. It’s not like you can help him. Even if you knew any helpful runes, which you don’t, you don’t have the magic reserves to use them right now.
So why did it feel like I was abandoning him?
I shook off the thought and pushed through the quiet streets. The village was creepier without Ryerson at my side. The stone shops and houses felt ominous, like I was being watched, and the shadows somehow felt deeper. The sunlight was waning, a deep orange glow dipping behind the trees and mossy boulders. Even the wind had abandoned me. I shivered but not from cold.
A bang echoed through the street, deafening in the silence, and I froze, staring at the little chip in the cobblestone at my feet where a cloud of rock dust had just poofed into the air.
And then my magic touched something. Something electric. Something powerful.
I looked up.
On the rooftop of a small house stood two men, backlit by the setting sun, watching me, one of them through a rifle scope. The rifleman’s cargo pants and dark t-shirt were dusty and he wore a black bandana around his neck. His face was hidden behind one of the largest guns I’d ever seen. The other man had curly black hair. He wore dark pants and a blue collared shirt, open at the neck. His arms hung loose at his sides as he grinned down at me, the spitting image of the grainy photo Dahlia had showed us yesterday.
“Hello, Ainsley,” said the dark-haired man.
“M-Merrick,” I said as the hair on my arms and the back of my neck tried to make a break for it.
And then a lot of things happened at once.
Gunshots exploded a few streets over, followed by the distant sounds of men shouting and running. Ryerson was in trouble. He wasn’t the only one.
Merrick barely moved except for a slight flexing of his fingers at his sides. It was enough. I may not be the strongest witch in the kitchen, but I recognized a mage gathering magic to him when I saw it.
There was a stone house to my left. I threw myself at the door and tumbled inside as an arc of electricity exploded the top half of the door and a gunshot ricocheted off the frame. I was on my feet in an instant, sprinting through a tiny living room, an even smaller kitchen, and crashing through the back door as another bolt of electricity shattered the stone tiles at my feet.
I raced up an alley and slipped through a narrow walkway sandwiched between two houses. I ran, serpentine-style, between alleys and houses and boulders and streets until I finally stumbled into the side of a building to catch my breath. I put my hands on my knees, and a gunshot pinged off the stone where my head had just been.
I yelped and then an arm hooked around my waist, hauling me against a hard chest that smelled of leather and gun oil.
Ryerson.
“Don’t move,” he said, his breath harsh in my ear. Like I was going anywhere. He leaned around the corner and emptied his gun into the street, and my ears rang with the noise. Then he jerked back into the alley and grabbed my hand, and we ran.
We made it halfway down the alley before the first gunshot pinged off the wall next to my head.
“Go!” Ryerson barked and spun to trade fire with the half dozen men behind us.
I sprinted down the alley and burst onto a side street crowded with small shops and skidded to a halt. My side screamed with a muscle cramp and my lungs burned, but those were the least of my worries.
Because there, in the middle of the street, stood Merrick.
11
Merrick smiled. I caught a glimpse of his pet sniper on a rooftop across the street, and then Ryerson’s arms were around me and we crashed through the door of a meat shop. Ryerson vaulted a counter and pulled me down next to him, covering my head with his arms and curving himself around me as bullets showered the countertop inches above our heads.
When the gunfire broke, he touched the bud at his ear.
“Tiago, d
o you read me? Dahlia? It was a setup. Send—”
Static and a shrill screech burst from the bud. He grimaced and ripped the tiny radio from his ear.
“They’re jamming us,” he said.
Footsteps crunched against the cobblestones outside the shop.
“I’ve been expecting you,” a voice rang out from the middle of the street.
“What is he talking about?” I whispered.
“No idea. Maybe he planted the intel that he was here to get us to come to him.” Ryerson’s lips twisted in a vicious smile. He pulled a clip from his pocket and reloaded his gun. “Good.”
“Good?!”
“I told you, I’m not letting him get away again.”
I wanted to shake him but he was armed, so I settled for a slightly hysterical snort. “Yeah, you have him right where you want him.”
“I don’t want to come in there after you,” Merrick called. “Maybe I’ll send a rune bomb instead? I trust you found the one I left for you at the café.”
Ryerson shot me a questioning look, and I shook my head. I didn’t have enough magic left to fuel a candle, much less another protection bubble.
“I’m growing bored, Agent Ryerson,” Merrick called.
Ryerson unclipped a spare gun from his ankle holster and tried to hand it to me. I stared at it, wide-eyed.
“Take it,” he said and shoved the gun into my hand. “Safety’s here.” He toggled a button. “There. Safety’s off. Go now, before they have time to cover the back door. If they’re already there, just point and shoot. A left should lead you back to the car. Keys are in the ignition. Take it and get the hell out of here.”
“What? No.” I couldn’t just leave him.
“You’re not an agent. If you stay you’ll just be in the way.”
Hard to argue with that. “What are you going to—”
“Go!” Ryerson launched himself over the counter and shot straight through the plate glass window. Glass rained everywhere, a cacophony of noise. I tried to cover my ears, only remembering I was holding a gun—a gun—after I beaned myself in the head with it.
License to Spell: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Undercover Witch Book 1) Page 8
