Chapter 11 #2
I blinked once, the words hitting harder than they should have. My jaw tightened, a slow swallow following as my shoulders pulled back on instinct. I let out a steady breath through my nose before answering.
“You can always count on me, Ezra.”
Silence stretched for a second before her voice snapped back into its usual edge.
“If I hear anything else, I’ll let you both know.”
“I’ll keep you updated on our end,” I replied.
Another pause, then the line went dead.
I stared ahead, the quiet in the car pressing in as her words replayed.
Excitatio. Day by day, we were getting closer to whatever they were really planning.
My fingers tapped the wheel once before going still. Calix couldn’t afford a distraction. Not now. Not when we were this close. My thoughts circled back to her. Olivia Savin. The way he’d looked at her. The way she’d looked at him. How he’d reacted this morning.
She was a risk—one I couldn’t ignore.
My jaw set.
If there was something there, anything remotely incriminating about her, I’d find it. There had to be something that would break the connection before it rooted too deep. He’d make the right call once he saw it. He always did. At least that was what I told myself.
But even as the thought settled, my pulse ticked up. Her image slipped back into my mind, along with something else.
That look on Calix’s face.
A spark I hadn’t seen since Valentina broke him. Something faint, fragile… but real. It had been five long years, and now it was back.
I was about to crush it with my own hands.
The realization sat heavy in my chest, sour and unwelcome.
Get it together, Rack.
Don’t disappoint Ezra. Don’t fail the Syndicate. Don’t make a mockery of your parents’ sacrifice.
I dragged in a deep breath, then pulled out my phone and typed a message to the few people I trusted most.
Find everything on Olivia Savin. I want it by tonight.
***
“Oh shit! Did you see that, Rack!?”
Calix’s voice cracked through the lab as a fireball burst from the tiny mounted cannon, slamming into the far wall. Heat rippled outward, licking across the makeshift course he’d built. Boxes buckled, a blanket caught fire, and the painted bullseye blackened under a fresh scorch mark.
His eyes were wide, just like a kid in a candy store, as he pointed at the fireball his revamped remote-controlled humvee had just thrown.
After I went to the office, worked a little, and made sure everyone in training and development was situated, I stopped by Jacob’s desk to make sure he had everything he needed before he went into full human breakdown mode.
When I came home, I found Calix in his personal lab, playing with his old inventions and making modifications.
He was already halfway out of his seat, moving around like a kid who’d just discovered sugar for the first time, eyes blown wide and bright.
I stepped closer, glancing over the damage. “Hard to miss,” I said, nodding toward the wall. “You hit dead center.”
The lab looked like a war zone. Cardboard towers sagged, puddles reflected flickering light, and scraps of metal and fabric had been arranged into a chaotic obstacle course that snaked across the floor.
The humvee, small, matte black, and now far more dangerous than it had any right to be, buzzed through it all, climbing, dipping, seamlessly adjusting to the uneven terrain.
He’d already made the changes—Olivia’s changes.
While he sent it tearing over a pile of scrap, I moved to his desk and slid open the top drawer. Eight orange fire cores. Four blue for air. Not enough for the pace he was burning through them.
I shut it and crouched at the lower drawer, pulling out the white casting box. The interior clicked as my hand slid inside. I pushed a thread of fire through my palm, steady and controlled. The mechanism answered with a soft lock, then released a small orange sphere popping up into the slot above.
I repeated it. Again. Again.
Each time the box answered, filling his supply while he tore through another test run behind me.
“Nice!” Calix barked out a laugh as the humvee launched off a tilted plank, landed clean, then fired again—this time catching two targets in a row. The second hit knocked an entire stack of boxes flat, sending debris skidding across the floor.
He doubled over with laughter, shoulders shaking as smoke curled around him.
Ash clung to his clothes, but he didn't seem to notice or care. He never did when he got like this.
He darted forward, scooped the humvee off the ground, and bolted for the side table. Tools clattered as he shoved things aside, grabbing what he needed without looking, already tearing into the chassis.
“She was right,” he said, the words tumbling out fast, breath uneven with excitement. “Every damn thing she said—” He shook his head, a grin pulling at his mouth as his fingers moved. “And she’s been right under our noses this whole time!”
Metal clicked. A panel snapped into place, and he still didn’t look up.
“We need her,” he continued, already halfway into the next thought.
“We steal her from Manshu, offer her more money, so much that she would drop him in a second, then bring her into the human division of FangTech. She’d kill it there.
” A pause, then sharper, more certain. “Lock her under contract before anyone else realizes, ensuring she is protected under us.”
My hand stilled inside the box. The next fire core didn’t form. My now silent phone pressed heavy against my side, but earlier today, it had buzzed with report after report.
Olivia Savin. Twenty-seven. No fixed record until Alto took her in. She currently lived in the garage of the shop. Few connections, even fewer friends. Now Manshu’s newest addition… somehow.
Then I looked into the human records and saw those early photos.
A child in an alley, her small hand wrapped around one that wouldn’t move. Blood pooled too wide for a child that young to understand.
Even though we were only ten at the time, I remembered that case. We all did.
Calix’s parents had dug into it personally, trying to either catch the supe or prove that it wasn't a supe, and it was the first time they’d turned up with nothing. No supe signature. No trace. Just a dead human and a child left behind.
Listening to their hushed conversations, I’d learned they dropped her off in a human orphanage to be raised by her own kind once they found out she didn't have any supe DNA. Looking at the gap in her paper trail, I could guess that she’d lived on the streets for a while, just trying to survive.
Behind me, Calix laughed again, louder this time, as he snapped another piece into place and sent the humvee skittering back to the ground. It tore forward, faster now, smoother, adapting to every surface like it had been built for it from the start.
My chest tightened.
For a second, the lab blurred, not from speed, not from magic, but from something sitting too heavy behind my ribs.
I knew what that kind of beginning could do to a young mind, how it made you feel all alone in this world. My heart thumped.
My gaze flicked back to him, studying the way he lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in years.
The words were there. Everything I’d learned about her was right at the tip of my tongue. Every reason this was a bad idea. Every angle I could use to shut it down before it started.
I just had to open my mouth and say them.
The box clicked softly in my hand, still empty.
I pulled my hand free, flexing my fingers once before letting them fall to my side, eyes drifting across the room like I might find something, anything, to anchor me.
Anything but the truth sitting in my throat, refusing to move.
She’s just a human, Rack, a reprieve, and that’s all she’s meant to be.
Behind me, tools clinked softly until Calix paused.
“Maybe…” he murmured, but the words weren’t really directed toward me. The stool creaked as he turned, gaze locking onto the fae blade sitting in the center of the room. Light slid across its surface, catching in strange ways as if it were watching him back. “I wonder…”
My jaw tightened. Is he seriously thinking about bringing her into that? Into something like this?
I stepped forward before I could second-guess it. “Calix, I did some digging on the human, Olivia Savin, and I found she—”
His hand came up without looking at me, stopping me mid-sentence.
“Don’t,” he said, quieter now.
He leaned back in his chair, then tipped his head toward me, and for a second that old version of him slipped through. The one from before he met Valentina.
“I think…” He hesitated, eyes searching somewhere past me before settling again. “I think I want to learn about her from her.”
The words landed heavier than they should have, warring with the unsettling feeling of anger I didn't quite understand.
He pushed up from the stool, setting the humvee aside like it didn’t matter anymore, and took a step closer. The energy in him had shifted, becoming less frantic and more… focused.
“I don’t know what this is, Rack,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck before letting his hand drop. “But she…” His mouth twitched like he wasn’t sure how to finish it. “She makes me feel… something.”
He huffed out a quiet, almost embarrassed laugh and looked down at the floor, scuffing his shoe against it once.
“Something I don’t really want to let go of just yet.”
He shook his head, like he knew how odd it sounded, then dragged a hand through his hair. When he looked back up, there was no confusion left, just acceptance. Quiet. Certain.
“I know what this is,” he said under his breath. “I know how this ends.”
His eyes flicked away for a moment, toward nothing in particular, like he could already see it playing out. Everything about it was too fast, too fragile, something that was slipping through his fingers before he even had a chance to hold onto it.
Then he looked back at me.
“But I still want it,” he admitted, his smile sad. “However long it lasts.”
The room felt smaller. My chest grew tighter the more he talked.
“Maybe that’s enough,” he added, softer now, sounding lost in thought.
The hope in his eyes hit harder than anything else he’d said. It lodged somewhere deep, sharp and slow, like it didn’t belong there but wasn’t going anywhere either. This big knot of emotions sat on my chest, waiting to explode.
Suddenly, my mind snapped back to the incident in the car. The tear falling, the way my magic had… failed. Almost like it couldn’t touch her.
Which was impossible. I was the fourth top-ranked mage. My magic was strong, so it couldn’t be an issue with my magic unless—
My entire body went rigid, thoughts circling in loops until catching on the same point over and over until everything else blurred out.
No. There was no way. She was just—
A hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing lightly.
I blinked, dragged back to the room, to see Calix smiling at me, completely unaware of the storm in my head.
“Either way,” he said, “it’d be nice to find out, right?”
My eyes widened. Did I say what I was thinking out loud?
He tilted his head, brows pinching. “You know, see if she’d even want to work at FangTech. I think I could convince her, but…” He winced. “There’s still a chance she tells me to fuck off. I think she has an aversion to supes.”
No shit.
After everything she’d been through? After whatever Manshu had dragged her into? Of course she did. Of course she’d be cautious, but that didn’t change what I needed to do.
I needed to see her again. Needed to test it. Because if that wasn’t a fluke….
Calix’s attention shifted, already moving on. He turned back toward the blade, the moment passing like it hadn’t carved straight through me.
“I’ll be down here a few more hours,” he said, rolling his shoulders as he stepped toward it. “Got a few ideas I want to try before I crash.”
He glanced over his shoulder, grin flashing briefly. “You, on the other hand, look like shit. Go get some sleep. And don’t worry—I won’t cut myself again.”
Now that he has something to look forward to.
I heard the words he didn’t say, feeling them settle heavily in my soul.
Still, I nodded and forced my legs to move, to get up and go out the door.
The doors shut, and the hallway felt too quiet after the chaos of the lab. Each step echoed as I moved toward the elevator, the weight in my chest growing heavier with every second.
The doors slid shut with a soft hiss, and just like that, I was alone.
I dragged a hand down my face, my breath shaky. The elevator began to move, and all I could do was stare at my reflection in the metal doors.
I didn’t know if I was making the right call here. Didn’t know if staying quiet just now was a mistake I wouldn’t be able to fix later.
All I knew was that I needed to see her again. Just once more.
Because if she really was what my instincts were starting to whisper… then Calix being distracted would be the least of our problems.