“Sure do, but it’ll only work if you pocket your abjuration magic for a few minutes and let me use my magic.”

She pulled the trigger on that eye roll. It was a doozy. Her pupils completely disappeared behind her eyelids.

I kept my expression vaguely amused, revealing none of my tension. I’d spent the night and most of my day ruminating on the revelation that execution could become an unavoidable stop on my sentencing journey. My conclusion? I could no longer wait for an opportunity to escape.

It was time to make that opportunity happen.

Blythe snorted with derision almost on par with Lienna’s. “What makes you think I’d ever allow that?”

Bracing my elbows on the table, I propped my chin on my hands and grinned. Oh, she would. Once I explained my “plan,” she wouldn’t be able to resist giving her permission.

What I wasn’t going to tell the captain, however, was that I didn’t intend to allow the MPD to arrest Maggie Cook any more than I intended to ever set foot in this precinct again.

Chapter Eleven

“Show me.” Lienna had her arms crossed, a nervous set to her jaw.

I raised an eyebrow. “Show you what?”

“What you’re going to do. I want to see it before she shows up.”

Lienna, Agent Jack Cutter, and I were seated at a small table near the entrance of an independent café in Mount Pleasant. A handful of patrons loitered at small tables among stark white, minimalistic décor that Maggie would hate.

That was the problem. Maggie was one of my favorite people, but she was notoriously picky about shit like this. If she got the wrong vibes from a place, she wouldn’t set foot in it. The first time we ever met for coffee—or tea, in her case—we’d tried three cafés before she approved of one.

This place’s minimalist style was antithetical to Maggie’s splashy, vintage aesthetic—but the location worked very well for my plan. So, to get Maggie in here, I would have to do some Redecorating. With a capital R.

I pointed at Lienna’s anti-magic cat’s eye necklace. “You’ll have to take that off.”

She hesitated. “If you try to pull anything …”

“You’ll wreak untold horrors upon my flesh until I wish I was never born?”

“No.” She flicked her hand at Agent Cutter, who shot me a menacing grin. “He will.”

Agent Cutter’s magic wasn’t as scary as Lienna’s, if I were to believe her interdimensional threats, but he was a telethesian—basically, a psychic bloodhound. The subtext was clear: escape was not an option.

“And I have a holding artifact that I’ve been told is extremely unpleasant,” the lumberjack added.

Ah, that was the scary part. I’ve never experienced a holding spell firsthand, but I know they freeze the victim in place, rendering them utterly incapable of any movement aside from shallow breathing and the odd blink … if they’re lucky. Unpleasant indeed.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t do anything stupid.”

Not yet, anyway.

With slow movements, as though I might lunge across the table, Lienna raised the cat’s eye necklace over her head. Laying it carefully on the tabletop, she gave me the go-ahead nod.

I took off the shark-tooth necklace and dropped it beside hers, concealing my relieved sigh with a showy throat clear. As her petite nose scrunched suspiciously, I focused on the glimmer in my brain that was her mind—her essence, brainwaves, whatever. I don’t have legit terms for this shit. I just follow my instincts.

Getting a nice, good focus on her, I changed the café’s walls from clinical white to a warm muddy brown.

Lienna’s eyes bulged, but no one else in the café even blinked.

Humming the Jeopardy tune, I morphed the linoleum floor to rustic hardwood, then changed the counters to match. How about an assortment of kitschy paintings I’d seen in a Wes Anderson movie for the walls? Sure, add those. A bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared beside the espresso machine. For flavor, I added an old jukebox in the back corner, then finished it off by warming the hue of the lights and dimming them enough to make things cozy.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Lienna’s wide eyes bounced around the redecorated space. “No one else can see this?”

“Just you.”

Truth be told, I could make everyone around us see what she was seeing, but I had zero plans to share that tidbit. First, suddenly altering every customer’s perception would cause a certain amount of alarm. Second, it was more difficult. And third, both Lienna and Agent Cutter were on a “need to know” basis regarding my abilities.

And they needed to know as little as possible.

She glanced at her partner, who mumbled, “I don’t see anything.”

“So, it isn’t an illusion?” she mused, a hint of wonder leaking into her tone.

I nodded. “More like a hallucination.”

“But it looks so real. Is it limited to visual alterations?”

“Not entirely,” I hedged. Visual hallucinations were the easiest, and audio hallucinations weren’t too bad. I could alter smell if I needed to, but taste and touch were next-level difficult.

I let the vision die, returning Lienna’s perception of the room back to its former austere glory.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen a mythic do that before. I don’t even know what a power like that would be called.”

That made two of us.

I didn’t need to know what my ability was called—it didn’t require a label to function properly—but there was something satisfying, maybe even empowering, about putting a title on it and being able to refer to part of your identity by name.

She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully, then a small smile curved her mouth. “You really are unique, Kit. Your abilities are something else. Being able to—”

Agent Cutter gave a discreet cough, and she straightened, maybe realizing her voice had gone too warm and relaxed. Much more “movie night pals” than “agent in charge of a dangerous criminal.”

“Remember,” she told me sternly, “if you lose control of the situation, it’s our job to take Maggie Cook in. Captain’s orders.”

“You got it, boss.” I shifted my gaze to the window. “By the way, she’s coming.”

A woman in her thirties was speed-walking toward the café. She wore paint-stained overalls and a bright yellow rain slicker, but its hood didn’t hide the Smurf-blue hair and oversized, thick-rimmed glasses.

Agent Cutter and Lienna scrambled off their seats. As she reached for the two necklaces, my hand shot out and I swiped them off the tabletop. Grinning, I held up her necklace, the cat’s eye swinging.

She plucked it out of my hand and hurried after her temporary partner. They dropped into a booth at the back where they could keep watch over me, and she looped her anti-magic necklace over her head, the cat’s eye bouncing against her chest. She caught my gaze and offered a sneaky smile of encouragement that Agent Cutter didn’t notice.

I curled my hand around the second necklace, the pendant clenched in my fist.

By the time Maggie reached the door, I’d locked onto her mind. To her eyes, the café was rustic and charming instead of a poorly sterilized hospital cafeteria. A gust of chilly, wet air swept inside as she opened the door.