28. Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly #3
The creature bent in Burke’s direction and—spoke? Made some kind of communication? Luna couldn’t hear it, but she saw the old man’s expression leap from sour disapproval to incandescent rage. She could feel the anger all the way across the green. Burke said something to Vex, who went pale.
“What? But we’re in the middle of—”
Burke was already vanishing, the smoke-creature dissolving with him, both of them winking out of existence like they’d never been there at all.
The portal to Malibu Beach flickered, glitched—suddenly showing a parking lot, then a forest, then something organic and disturbing—before collapsing entirely with a sound like ripping fabric.
Vex stood alone in the gazebo, looking like a man who’d just been abandoned mid-tightrope walk.
“Technical difficulties!” he said, voice cracking slightly. “Just give me a minute . . .”
Vex’s minions frantically double-checked equipment and tapped furiously at laptops. The chat was a river of question marks.
“What the hell was that thing?” Delilah whispered.
“I don’t know,” Luna said. Her heart was hammering. “But Burke left in a hurry.”
“Something’s wrong,” Mama said.
“He looked pissed,” Scarlett noted happily. “Wonder what made him so mad?”
“Or who.” Luna could only think of one person who could make Burke that angry.
* * *
Shaw was on his third circuit past cage 6B—meaning he was officially lost—when the temperature dropped even further than he thought possible. Beyond the manufactured cold of the server room. Something else. Something that made his bones ache and every instinct scream run.
He pressed himself against a rack and watched.
About ten feet ahead, the air shimmered.
Then tore. Then spat out Burke like the universe was coughing up something unpleasant.
There he was, in the middle of the aisle.
Perfectly pressed suit, perfectly rigid posture, a man who’d just discovered someone had the audacity to exist without his permission.
Behind him, one of those shadow bastards—a sentinel—flickered into being and immediately dissolved back into nothing. Message delivered, apparently.
Shaw’s mind raced. He was trapped between Burke and whatever sentinels were hunting him from the other direction. No exits. No advantages. No—
Wait. There was always an angle.
Shaw was lost. Completely, hopelessly turned around in this maze of identical metal boxes. He’d been trying to find cage 7B for what felt like hours.
But Burke wouldn’t get lost. He’d built this whole network. He’d know exactly where every rack was, every cage, every ward. Including the one Shaw had marked with a burgundy tie.
Shaw took a breath and stepped out from behind the rack.
“You again.” Burke spoke in the tone of a man identifying dog shit on his shoe.
“Me again. Fancy meeting you here.”
“My orders were for you to be restrained.”
“Yeah, well. Your dogs aren’t as good as you think they are.” He started backing up slowly. Not running. Not yet. Just . . . creating distance. Drawing him forward.
“You will not escape this facility.”
“Probably not,” Shaw admitted. He took another step backward, watching Burke’s face.
“You are an insect.” Burke matched Shaw’s retreat step for step. “An annoyance. Nothing more.”
“Funny thing about insects.” Shaw kept backing up, leading Burke down the aisle. “We’re surprisingly hard to squash.”
Shaw saw a flicker of irritation cross Burke’s perfect features.
Good. Irritation meant carelessness. Carelessness meant mistakes. Burke’s hands began to glow with that same killing light the sentinels had used.
Shaw’s heart hammered. This was the play. Lead him through the maze. Let him chase. Let him get angry enough to throw power around without thinking.
And eventually—if Shaw’s luck held, which was a big if—Burke would show his hand by trying to protect cage 7B. He just had to survive long enough to get there.
“You know what your problem is?” Shaw said, still backing up, watching the aisle behind him in his peripheral vision. Looking for cage numbers. Looking for anything familiar.
“I have no interest in your observations.”
“You think magic is about control, but that’s wrong.” Shaw ducked around a corner—cold aisle, his coat caught the wind—and Burke followed. “It’s about sleight of hand.”
“Nonsense.”
“Really?” Shaw risked a glance at a cage as he passed: 5A. Wrong direction, yet again. He adjusted, angling left. “Because right now, in Oak Haven, Luna Melrose is tearing apart every spell you built. But you’re here, chasing me, instead of stopping her.”
His expression went arctic. “The Melrose girl is nothing—”
“She’s better than you. Smarter than you. And she’s making Vex look like a fool.”
Burke raised his hand, and the glow intensified.
Shaw grinned. “So go ahead. Kill me. But you’ll still lose.”
Burke fired.
Shaw dove.
The bolt of killing magic screamed past his shoulder and slammed into a server rack with a sound like the world cracking open. Metal shrieked. Cables exploded. The whole structure listed sideways, sparks raining down like angry fireflies.
Shaw hit the ground, rolled, came up running deeper into the maze, praying his luck would hold just a little bit longer.
Behind him, he heard Burke’s footsteps. Measured, unhurried, absolutely certain.