Victory! With the telekinetics vanquished, I glanced around for any other dangers we might need to worry about. My peripheral vision caught a glimpse of movement, and as I started to turn back toward Lienna, sharp pain burst across my ribs.
All the muscles in my body contracted, and the world went black.
Chapter Seven
A discordant buzzing woke me up. It sounded like a thousand seagulls with laryngitis whisper-squawking over an overturned truck hauling fresh bread.
Oddly specific, I know, but I was only semiconscious. And hungry.
My head cleared and I realized the noise wasn’t seagulls but half a dozen MPD agents milling about the cargo bay in which Lienna and I had done battle with Jeff and Geoff. I was propped against the side of the smart car, and the shark tooth necklace had mysteriously found its way back around my neck. Across the loading bay, I could see that the white box van had disappeared.
Lienna stood a few feet away, scribbling on a clipboard.
I moaned and sat upright. “What the shit happened?”
She looked up from her paperwork. “Oh, you’re awake.”
“Did you hit me with one of those evil little marbles?”
“I had to make sure you didn’t escape.” She glanced around at the other MPD agents, none of whom were paying attention to anything but their own tasks, then stepped closer to me. “What did you do, Kit?”
“I was saving you, not escaping,” I complained, rubbing my eyes. “I can’t believe you zapped me.”
She crouched to get on my eye level. “What did you do to Jeff?”
“Nothing. You’re the one who punched him in the head.”
“The other Geoff. You walked right up to him, and he didn’t even try to stop you.”
I shrugged. “He wasn’t the sharpest spike-ball nunchaku in the toolshed.”
She analyzed me like a specimen under a microscope. “I know you’re a Psychica mythic, but mentalism usually requires touch or close proximity. Are you—”
“Where are we off to next?” I interrupted with chipper enthusiasm, fully prepared to derail this “what kind of psychic powers do you have?” guessing game. For obvious reasons, the less she knew about my magic, the better. And aside from that … let’s just say most people didn’t react well when they found out what I could do.
A magician—or a convict in MPD custody—never revealed his tricks, after all.
With one more sweeping assessment, she stepped away from the car. “We aren’t off anywhere. I have suspects to interrogate, and you’re heading back to the precinct.”
As she signaled for an MPD cohort to come over, I scrambled to my feet.
“Hey now,” I protested, trying not to sound frantic as all my plans for escape crashed and burned around me. “That wasn’t the deal.”
The lumberjack agent who’d escorted me to and from my cell a handful of times since my arrest walked over to us. “What do you need?”
“Jack, can you take Kit back to holding?” She nodded my way.
I couldn’t help it: a grin cracked my mouth open. “Your name is Jack?”
The mountain man frowned. “Agent Cutter to you.”
“Your name is Jack Cutter?” No way! This broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded, callus-handed agent was one plaid shirt and an axe away from landing himself on the cover of Wood Cutter Weekly. “It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“Keep an eye on him,” she warned her co-worker. “Make sure he doesn’t take off that necklace.”
The tree chopper grabbed me by the crook of my elbow to lead me away, but I shook him off and turned back to Lienna. “You know they won’t talk to you, right?”
“Jeff and Geoff?” she said. “Maybe not at first, but we have ways to get answers out of them.”
“Not if they don’t know anything.”
“They know something.” She returned her attention to her paperwork as Agent Cutter took hold of my arm again. Not letting me wiggle free this time, he dragged me away.
I waited until we’d traversed a good fifteen feet before I called, “That’s not how Blue Smoke works.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“You heard them. They’re part of Blue Smoke.”
“And what is Blue Smoke?”
I gave her a half-cocked smile. “You have no idea, do you?”
She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed and gestured angrily for Agent Cutter to bring me back over to her.
“It looks like Godzilla went through here.”
Lienna and I stood in the drizzling rain outside a temporary chain-link fence encircling an office building that had belonged to my former guild. The last time I’d visited, renovations had been underway on the dingy two-story structure, replacing the broken windows and scrubbing away its distinct “crack house” vibe. It hadn’t been much to look at, but it’d been more than … this.
“Not Godzilla,” she murmured. “A pyromage.”
“A strong one.”
“In a very flammable structure, yes.”
The basic shape of the building remained, but all the windows were gone, sections of the roof had caved in, and scorch marks stained its walls. It was a charred mess.
I grabbed hold of the chain-link fence, and it wobbled alarmingly as I pulled myself over it in one quick movement. For a brief second, I was separated from my overseer by a six-foot fence, and the ever-present thought of escape leaped to the forefront of my brain.
But she smoothly vaulted the fence and landed beside me before I could formulate a plan beyond “run really fast.” She peered into the darkened doorway of the burnt structure.
“Blue Smoke,” she muttered. “A clandestine organization inside a rogue guild.”
It was better than that: a clandestine organization inside a rogue guild that was masquerading as a legal guild that was posing as a respectable corporate law office that was actually neck-deep in illegal schemes, fraud, embezzlement, and blackmail. It was secret-ception.
Speaking of secrets, yes, I’d decided to play one of my aces to avoid a trip straight back into Duncan’s thirsty company. Revealing what I knew about Blue Smoke—and that Quentin had been involved—was a risk, but one I was willing to take.
Lienna gave me a skeptical look. “And the Blue Smoke group met here?”
“That’s what Quentin told me.”
He wasn’t supposed to tell me anything, but Quentin’s lips tended to loosen after a few margaritas or daiquiris or martinis or whatever his drink of choice was on a given night. According to the empath, KCQ’s late guild master, Rigel, had collected a covert group of his favorite mythics for a mysterious purpose, which none of them were fully privy to.
Quentin hadn’t even known why the group was called Blue Smoke. I’d speculated that it had something to do with the made-for-TV movie starring Scott Bakula of the same name. Quentin hadn’t agreed.
Of course, I hadn’t let on to Lienna that I didn’t know much about the group or their plans. Revealing that little reality wouldn’t help me any.
The moment we stepped inside the office building, darkness swept over us. She dug into her satchel, pulled out her phone, and activated its flashlight mode. With the bright beam guiding our way, we moved carefully through the debris.