Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kit
The late-afternoon sun hung low in the sky above the isolated ruins of old Bahla, submerging the narrow streets in deep shadow and a sense of profound unease.
Lienna and I skulked southward through the derelict town, putting distance between us and both the chaos and the cadaver we’d abandoned in Teddy’s house.
Pausing only to check Lienna’s head wound—which, thankfully, wasn’t as bad as it looked—and clean the blood off her face, we headed for the tourist shopping area directly across the main road from the fort and inserted ourselves into the bustle of the evening clientele.
I trailed after Lienna, letting her lead while I bent my eyeballs and brain cells toward scanning for suspicious figures amid the populace.
All I noticed were more of those weird pings on my clairsentience radar that I’d detected in the fort earlier that afternoon—the ones that hadn’t seemed human.
The consumerist configuration consisted of blocky structures all squished together into a single mall with no clear layout or intentional organization.
The myriad businesses were in various states of operation, with some full of patrons while others had already closed up shop.
Lienna and I mingled with the shoppers for a few minutes until we felt confident we weren’t being followed or watched, then circled the mall.
In a quiet nook in the southeast corner, I peered through a window into a narrow room, the walls covered in fabric samples and dozens of dishdashas of various sizes.
More importantly, behind the curved front desk was a computer monitor.
Hiding us with an invisi-bomb, I pulled a lock-picking kit from my backpack.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lienna muttered, still holding the artifact keychain we’d found on the assassin’s body. “I don’t even remember where I left it. I just remember taking it off my satchel.”
I inserted my tension wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and slipped a ball rake pick in above it. “Did you leave it at the LA precinct?”
“It’s possible.” She leaned against the doorframe beside me. “I cleared out my cubicle and took everything to my parents’ house after officially transferring to the Vancouver precinct, but I don’t remember whether the keychain was with all that stuff.”
“So a Consilium stooge could’ve stolen it from the precinct.” I wiggled the pick in the keyhole. “Or from your parents’ place.”
The pins dropped into place and the lock twisted open with a satisfying click. No alarm sounded. We were in the clear.
I pushed the door open and entered the dimly lit tailor shop. Crossing the narrow entryway, we squeezed ourselves behind the front desk.
“I used to have a strong emotional connection to this.” Lienna swung the charm on its chain like a pendulum. “Some psychics can use mementos to link to people. Psychometrics and telethesians … as well as clairvoyants, prophets, and allucinators.”
“Oh goody,” I grumbled as I pulled our USB stick from my backpack. “So we can add ultra-rare super-psychics to the list of mythics the Consilium might be using against us.”
“It could be how the assassin knew where to wait for us.” Lienna took the USB stick, inserted it into the computer on the counter, and started the machine. “But now that we have the keychain, they can’t use it to find me.”
“What if they have other mementos of yours?” I absently watched the incomprehensible lines of text on the screen as the system loaded from our USB stick and automatically opened a TOR browser with our usual mole-meeting details.
“Another assassin or two catching us off guard might be more than we can handle.”
“We handled it okay.”
“Did we?” My gaze flicked from the blinking green cursor to the cut on her forehead. I touched her hip, and she shifted into the curve of my arm, her weight settling against my side.
“I might have a dozen different abilities now,” I said quietly, “but I’m not crushing my enemies with fire tornadoes.”
She tucked the keychain into her pocket and rested her head on my chest. “Because you’re an Elementaria newb. You can’t expect to be as good as a mage with a lifetime of practice when you’ve only been doing it for a few months.”
“Even if I had Aaron Sinclair’s pyro power, it’d still be nothing compared to Bodil.
” I slid a lock of her hair through my fingers, flicking away grit from our battle with the assassin.
“I don’t think any amount of practice will close the gap.
Maybe my genes are too diluted to be a real archmythic. ”
“Or there’s another factor we don’t know about,” Lienna mused, turning so she was leaning into my chest, her face tilted up toward mine.
“Dr. Sorensen said the Sha’ir needed Bodil’s mentorship to rise to her level, but he didn’t know what she taught him and neither do we.
Maybe there are archmythic-specific skills you need to learn. ”
Archmythic-specific skills? How the hell was I supposed to learn those without traveling a thousand years into the past to ask Bodil to be my Mr. Miyagi?
Reaching up, Lienna brushed her fingertips across my cheekbone, no doubt wiping away more battle dust. Her eyes were soft. “You don’t need to become Bodil, Kit. You’re enough exactly as you are.”
I curled my hand against the side of her neck, my thumb tracing the edge of her jaw. But if I could be more, how could I not try? What if I needed that power when the Consilium set its next trap for us?
Her eyelids lowered, her dark lashes fanning across her cheeks. I leaned down, my nose brushing against hers.
Motion flashed in my peripheral vision. My head snapped up, but it wasn’t yet another attempt on our lives. It was the flicker of text appearing on the computer screen.
>Arctic Shrew has logged in.
>Arctic Shrew: Who is this?
“The mole wasn’t kidding about trying to be available more often,” I muttered.
Sliding out of my arms, Lienna stepped in front of the keyboard and confirmed we were, as always, Rose Petal.
>Arctic Shrew: What do you need? Be quick.
The rushed tone was new. Lienna didn’t waste time asking why the mole was in such a hurry. She was already typing as I placed the assassin’s MPD badge beside the keyboard.
>You: I need any information you can provide on an MPD agent. All I have is her badge number.
Lienna copied the number off the badge, which I then stashed in my backpack.
As we waited for the mole to respond, my thoughts returned to Bodil’s godlike abilities—and my lack thereof.
If Teddy was right and I could reach her level, that would change everything.
But at the same time, the thought of wielding that kind of power made my insides twist in a distinctly uncomfortable way.
>Arctic Shrew: How did you get your hands on this agent’s badge number?
Lienna glanced at me. I shrugged. She turned back to the keyboard and typed a quick response.
>You: From her body after she tried to kill me.
>Arctic Shrew: Ah.
>Arctic Shrew: That tracks.
Before Lienna could type another question, the mole’s next message appeared.
>Arctic Shrew: Access to the agent’s profile is completely restricted, and that usually means one thing.
>You: Which is?
>Arctic Shrew: The agent was SI.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
We’d already assumed that we’d nearly been whacked by a Consilium assassin, but we’d nearly been whacked by an MPD-sanctioned assassin, with all the resources and carte blanche power of the SI behind her.
What sent a foreboding chill rushing through every nerve in my body, however, was the implication: the Consilium was no longer content to wait for local bounty hunters to nab me. They wanted me now.
And that meant they would keep escalating until they got what they wanted.
“We need to know more,” I said to Lienna. “Who sent her? Griva? How did she find us—did she use the keychain or something else? How many more assassins should we expect—”
“I got it,” she said, pulling the keyboard closer.
>You: I need more. Is there another way to access their file?
>Arctic Shrew: Give me a few minutes.
I shifted my weight, the pressure of the Consilium’s newfound impatience bearing down on me.
The questions that had been bubbling in my and Lienna’s brains about why Oman felt so dangerous had their answer.
Unlike our previous stops on our fugitive world tour, the Consilium was now leveraging its unstoppable reach, resources, and power to bring us down.
And what did we have?
We needed an edge. We needed an advantage.
“I’m gonna make a call,” I said.
Lienna gave me a searching look but didn’t question my announcement. “Be careful.”
“Always am.”
As I wandered toward the back of the shop, I slid my phone out of my pocket. It was safe enough—or as safe as it could get while being an internationally wanted fugitive—to make a call since we’d be dumping our phones and getting the hell out of Oman in short order.
I punched in a number and pressed the phone to my ear. One ring. Two. Three. Crap, what time was it back home? Early enough to be a rude awakening for most people, I was pretty sure.
The eighth ring cut off, and a deep, familiar voice rasped on the other end. “Who is this?”
“Well, ‘hello’ to you too, my crystal-laden amigo,” I replied cheerfully. “Hope you weren’t sleeping.”
A moment of silence stretched across the twelve thousand kilometers between our phones.
“Shakespeare,” Zak said quietly.
A little twang rang through my chest. It wasn’t just that he’d used his old nickname for me, but also the quiet concern layered into it.
“Yeah.” I tried to fill my monosyllabic answer with unspoken reassurance for his unspoken concern.
“What do you need?” Zak asked.
It was the same question the mole had asked, but from Zak, it sounded more like a no-strings-attached offer to help than a hurried demand. The bands of tension squeezing my ribs loosened.