Now the real test of my abilities began—holding the hallucination while carrying on a perfectly natural conversation that would require its fair share of lying, manipulation, and careful questioning.

Yeah, this would be fun.

Maggie’s gaze darted across every patron, checking for threats, then she scurried to my window-side table, assessing the room once more as she came.

“Hey, Kit,” she greeted with a smile.

Standing, I reached out for a quick hug. “Hey, Maggie.”

As my arms closed around her narrow shoulders and her odd, dusty lavender perfume tickled my nose, I quashed a nervous twist in my gut. Focus, I reminded myself. Hold the projections.

And keep my guilt tamped down real tight.

As I dropped back into my seat, she sat across from me, her eyes moving in a ceaseless search for danger. “Are you sure this place is safe?”

I made a show of peering around. “Looks safe to me.”

Her shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. “It does … it does. I like this place.”

Mission accomplished. Well, sort of. Making her comfortable enough to talk was only part one.

Before I could launch into part two, she smiled. “I’m glad you’re safe, Kit. Very glad.”

“I got lucky.” Sort of true. I wasn’t dead, after all.

“KCQ was bad, bad news. I’m happy you’re free of them.”

“You heard what happened?” I asked cautiously.

“I heard most of your people got rounded up. I heard Rigel was killed.” She hesitated. “One of the Smoke and Mirrors guys heard a story about you down in LA.”

As far as the public was concerned, Smoke and Mirrors was a special effects company for the movie industry, but non-mythics had no clue how special those effects were.

That’s what Maggie did. Aside from whipping up ultra-safe, cool-looking explosions for major film studios, she was one of the best alchemists in the city. She could transmute almost anything, if you gave her enough time, and she had a knack for spells that involved astrology.

“That wasn’t me,” I lied, pressing my thumb into the pendant hidden in my lap. “It was probably another KCQ intern.”

“Could be.” She fiddled with one of the many rings on her fingers. “You said on the phone that you were looking for information.”

“Have you heard about Quentin?”

“Yes, yes. He’s on the run now. Have you talked to him??”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t reach him. But I talked to Jenkins—his diviner. Quentin’s mentioned him to you before, right? According to Jenkins, Quentin went to him for a reading about Blue Smoke.”

Maggie blinked rapidly. “Blue Smoke. Do you know …?”

“I don’t know the details,” I said, mixing lies with truth, “but Rigel was going to bring me in before he kicked the bucket.”

Her attention skirted around the café again. “Why? What do you want with Blue Smoke?”

I honed my focus on her mind. If I let any part of the hallucination slip—if the paint on the walls faded, or the hardwood warped, or the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bobblehead twitched unnaturally—the whole facade could fail. And that would screw up my plan in a big way.

“I’m worried about Quentin. MagiPol is all over him, and Blue Smoke is … dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” she repeated softly.

“Quentin is my friend. I want to help him, but I don’t know enough.” I leaned across the table. “You’re one hell of an alchemist, and if Rigel had you freelancing for him, you must know something about Blue Smoke.”

Swallowing, she stood from the table. “I need some tea.”

While she placed her order at the counter, I glanced at the ever-vigilant pair at the back of the café. Lienna, as always, had one hand on her satchel, and the other was fidgeting with the chain of her necklace, as though reassuring herself it was firmly in place and protecting her mind.

I really wished she’d stop doing that. It was making everything that much more difficult.

Returning to the table and sliding on her chair, Maggie blew gently on her steaming tea. “I always felt you were different from the rest of the KCQ members, Kit.”

I smiled. “I thought the same thing when I first saw you there.”

There was no lie in that. Her boldly dyed hair, disdain for anything that resembled office attire, and warm smile had caught my attention—mainly because she’d looked as out of place in the Psychica guild as I’d felt. That unexpected kinship had led to a casual conversation that had grown into a casual friendship, one with more warmth and genuine kindness than any relationship I’d formed during my tenure with KCQ.

“They were a greedy, greedy bunch,” she murmured. “Desperation may make men evil, but greed makes evil men worse.”

“I’ve never cared about money. I was just—”

“I know, I know. You were finally in a place that accepted you. I understand. I do. But you never belonged there. You aren’t the greedy type. Rigel and the others, greed was in their blood. They reached beyond the world of lawyers and contracts.”

I waited for her to continue.

“Do you know Cerberus, Kit?”

“The security guild?”

“Blue Smoke was a plan to break into Cerberus.”

My spine went rigid. Break into Cerberus? That was nuts, even by KCQ standards.

Cerberus wasn’t your standard locks and alarms anti-theft company. It was a guild of security experts—the best of the best, with an arsenal of damn near unbreakable spells for keeping valuable things safe, and people paid a good hunk o’ cash for their services.

“There’s been a rumor for years that Cerberus is holding on to a deep, dark secret,” Maggie whispered. “A dangerous artifact. Very dangerous, very powerful. The whole purpose of Blue Smoke was to steal it. I don’t know where he got that name from. Blue Smoke?”

“Was he a Scott Bakula fan?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Now was not the time for stupid jokes. I peeked sideways at our two-agent audience, then hardened the hallucinations I was projecting. “So, what was the point of it all? They wanted to steal this crazy powerful artifact to do what with it?”

“I don’t know, but the answer is the same no matter what.” She swirled her tea in her mug. “Greed, Kit. It’s always about greed.”

“And you were a part of Blue Smoke?”

“No. Well, yes. At first. I helped set up protections for a vault. Rigel wanted a place to store valuable items, and he likes my alchemy over sorcery. Especially using astral keys for a door that can only be opened on a specific day.”

Hmm. The murder trap in Rigel’s secret lair fit the bill for Maggie’s alchemy, but it wasn’t what I’d call a vault. “A specific day? What do you mean?”

Her eyes lit up; she loved talking about her work. “A seal that is unassailable except on one day of the month. Once Rigel locked it, he wouldn’t need to guard it, even from his own cohorts, except on that one day.” She smirked. “I chose the waning third crescent moon.”

“The what now?”

“The moon at one-third visibility. I’d hoped its slowly dying light might remind him of the cost of his greed.”