“Kit?” she whispered.

I blinked again, wondering if I was imagining the tears in her eyes. “I’m okay. You dumped the antidote in here in the nick of time.”

Lifting my arm out of the now harmless potion lapping at my waist, I gave a third blink. The moment my skin parted ways with the liquid, it was dry. Not a speck of lemony potion clung to my hand. My unsubmerged clothes were dry too.

Now that the potion wasn’t trying to murder us, it was actually pretty nifty.

“Oh.” Lienna retracted her arm in a sheepish way. “That’s g-good.”

It was good. In fact, it was freaking amazing—and a relief-fueled grin stretched my lips. A semi-giddy laugh escaped me.

“We did it! Take that, Rigel, you cowardly son of a bitch!” Grin widening, I raised my arms toward Lienna in offer. “Shall we?”

She hesitated, then reached out. Her hands gripped my shoulders as I pulled her off the cabinet. Her legs splashed into the liquid—and she sank like a stone because there was no desk under her.

I heaved her up and onto the desktop, and she thumped against my chest. Her wide eyes stared up at me.

When had I wrapped my arms around her? Because that’s where they were now. I had no explanation.

“You saved my life,” she mumbled.

“Technically not. You’d already de-acidified the potion.”

“But you didn’t know that.”

I twitched my shoulders in a shrug. “I wasn’t going to let you die if I could help it.”

“But you could’ve escaped custody.”

My eyebrows scrunched. “Seriously? I know you don’t like me, but do you really think I’m that much of a heartless scumbag?”

She muttered something. All I caught was “like you.”

I let my arms fall from around her. For a second, she didn’t move—leaning against me, her hands resting on my chest—then jerked away from me as though only just realizing how close we were. I shifted backward and the heel of my shoe landed on something.

With a considering look at the potion’s rippling surface, I ducked under. Eyes squeezed shut as the cool liquid engulfed my head, I felt blindly around my feet. My hands found a leather book, and I shot back up with a splash.

“What did you do that for?” Lienna demanded.

Smirking, I held up the small black address book I’d found in the desk drawer while searching for a way not to die. Like all of Rigel’s belongings, it’d escaped its potion-dunking without damage. The booby trap had been for the sole purpose of melting trespassers and all evidence of their intrusion.

I tossed the book to her. “After all that, we shouldn’t leave empty-handed.”

She caught it, surprise flickering over her features, before sliding the book into her satchel. “Should we get out of here?”

“You got it,” I replied—and swept her off her feet again.

“Kit!”

I stepped off the desk. We plunged down, the liquid rising to my chin. I boosted her up so her head was above mine, my arms folded under her ass and her legs around my waist.

She gripped my shoulders, her satchel bouncing against her arm. “What are you doing?”

“Did you want to swim?” I started across the room in an awkward underwater gait. “Maybe you do. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to go diving in melted lemon gelato.”

I started to loosen my hold on her—and she clamped her arms around my neck in a death grip.

Squashing a smile, I carried her across the room, through the door, and into the flooded stairwell. After stubbing my toe on the first step, I carried her up to the ground level and out into the burnt remains of the office. We emerged dry without a speck of potion on us. Crazy.

I let her slide down my front until her feet landed gently on the floor. Her hands were still on my shoulders, and as she peeked up at me through dark locks of hair tangled across her face, a pink flush tinged her cheeks, scarcely discernible in the dim light.

That faint glow transformed to a bright beam that hit our faces, and a voice called loudly, “You’re back!”

Lienna sprang away from me.

Security guard Trevor Eggert and his disgruntled upper lipholstry were making a beeline for us across the rubble-strewn floor, a flashlight in one hand and his cell in the other. He waved his phone. “I’ve been doing some reading here, and I can’t find anything about any MPD agency.”

I was honestly impressed that old man Eggert knew how to use the internet. “Did you ask Siri or Alexa?”

His brow furrowed and his mustache twitched. “I Googled it. And all I can find here are conspiracies about magic.”

Tugging her jacket straight, Lienna strode toward the door, radiating her usual amount of commanding agent confidence now that we were away from the secret death room. I followed on her heels, Eggert trotting after us.

“Magic, that’s what this says,” he reiterated, waving his phone again. “Apparently, there are real magic people here among us. And apparently, there are magic police who keep the whole thing quiet. And that got me thinking here, you see, MPD. Magic Police Department. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Nothing about what you’re saying makes sense, Eggsy.”

“But—”

“Listen to yourself. Magic police?” We exited the building and stopped at the locked gate. “Next you’re going to tell me that the Earth is flat, Kanye West is a lizard person, and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s secret blend of herbs and spices is a nefarious recipe used to control the minds of the grease-eating public.”

Half turning toward me, Lienna rolled her eyes. Yep, she was back to her usual self again.

“Go home, man,” I told the security guard in a soothing voice. “Put on your comfy slippers, turn on the weather channel, and try not to stress about it.”

“Let’s go, Kit,” Lienna said.

Obediently, I vaulted over the fence. She jumped over it and fell into step beside me as we walked away all casual like Riggs and Murtaugh. Eggert, standing on the other side of the fence, squinted after us.

Lienna and I crossed the rain-slicked street and got back into our trusty pocket-sized steed.

“Where to next?” I asked brightly. “Want to grab a burger to celebrate not dying? There’s an awesome place down on Hastings.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m taking you back to jail.”

Damn. I’d been hoping she’d forget about that.

Chapter Nine

Spitting rain pattered the windshield. I watched the wipers slash across the glass as my mind drifted through the back-to-back near-death experiences I’d scarcely survived.

Was being an MPD agent always this hazardous? If it was, Lienna had more guts than I’d thought. My KCQ employment had nothing on today. The last time I’d felt remotely safe was in Jenkins’s study, picking books off his shelves and giggling over the Kama Sutra.

My thoughts lingered on the books, and a long breath slid from my lungs.

“You okay?”

I lifted my head, my gaze shifting to Lienna in the driver’s seat. “Huh?”

“You’re quiet.”

“Just contemplating the timeline in Primer.”