Yeah, he’d always been self-centered, but calling me a traitor when he’d revealed my existence to the MPD? Total bullshit. If not for him, I would’ve caught that flight and vanished somewhere in the South Pacific long before the MPD learned about “that intern guy who never shuts up about movies.”
The behavior of Quentin’s new “baby” was way weirder. Greed-condemning, paranoid Maggie was aiding and abetting a fugitive? Helping with his Blue-Smoke-related plans? Endangering herself for profit?
All wrong.
While it was totally Quentin’s MO to manipulate people, he had a particular type when it came to women, and Maggie was about ten years too old and five hundred percent too quirky for him. Obviously, he was using his empath abilities to make her think she loved him. I mean, even I’d felt like snuggling up on his lap, and last I checked, I didn’t bat for that team. His gooey love waves had caught me when I got too close.
I slumped back against the glass wall. Quentin would only be influencing Maggie if he needed something from her, and the only thing he desired right now was Blue Smoke. Rigel had wanted Maggie’s help to break into Cerberus. If Quentin had taken over the heist plan, he must want her help too. And unlike Rigel, he wasn’t giving Maggie the option to refuse.
Though Quentin was manipulating her on a level that surpassed “mean” and delved straight to “traumatizing evil,” there was nothing I could do about it. I was no match for Quentin, and even if I were, I had no idea where he’d taken Maggie or how to find them or … anything. Besides, I had my own survival to worry about.
Despite that, a new dollop of cold guilt joined the weight that had settled deep in my gut.
I finished a bag of candy, threw it in the garbage can next to the bus stop, and dropped back onto the bench. Exhaustion filtered through me—mental and physical. Redecorating the café for Maggie while altering the necklace for Lienna, then all sorts of Split Kit shenanigans during my escape … I was beat.
My eyelids were drooping when something across the street caught my attention: a person standing at the edge of the curb, watching me. Tall, lean, dressed in dark clothes. Shadows masked the details of their face.
They didn’t have the stick-up-the-ass rigor of an MPD agent, but they did have the leather-clad intensity of a bounty hunter.
Lienna hadn’t wasted any goddamn time, had she? The moment I’d escaped, she’d probably pushed my name, mug shot, and villainous description to every mythic guild in the city. I wondered how big a bounty Blythe had authorized. How bad did she want my handsome face back in her interrogation room?
The figure across the street stepped off the curb and walked toward me.
I sprang off the bench, accidentally dropping the stolen phone. I needed to get out of there—but I didn’t know what I was dealing with. A sorcerer? A telekinetic? A mage? I had to find out.
Time for my third, and arguably coolest, hallucination power: Creature Feature. I didn’t get to use this one often because it lacked the subtlety of Split Kit and the Redecorator. Surprisingly, terrifying people wasn’t that useful in day-to-day life.
I imagined a big-ass monster truck with blinding headlights and screaming wheels. Then I projected the image of that truck, blasting down the road, onto the person approaching me.
In theory, a roaring monster truck about to flatten you into the pavement should garner a reaction: you jump out of the way, or reveal your magic to deflect the truck, or scream and leave a new brown stain in your underpants.
In reality, the approaching mythic gave a slight flinch, then kept walking.
What. The. Shit.
Okay, well, time to run for it. I turned on my heel and bolted—and the bounty hunter sprinted after me, angling to cut me off.
Excellent. They were fearless and they had the reaction time of a genetically mutated ninja cat.
My survival drive fueled my legs, and I kicked it up another notch, running so fast the rain didn’t seem to touch me. Unfortunately, the ninja cat was also pretty damn quick.
“Kit!” they yelled. “Stop!”
Oh yeah, sure. Just because you asked so nicely.
As I dashed down the sidewalk, I concentrated. Split Kit veered left across the road—and I, now invisible to my pursuer, careened to the right.
The bounty hunter took the bait. Praise be to Ralph Ellison. Slowing to a jog as I ascended a grassy hill toward a set of warehouses, I sent fake-Kit into the trees on the road’s other side. Ninja-cat zoomed after him in hot pursuit—then threw on the brakes.
They skidded to a halt. Paused. Then whipped around and ran back across the road—right toward me. How? I was invisible!
“Stop, Kit!” they called. “I’m not gonna hurt you!”
Like I was going to take their word for it.
Up ahead, a seven-foot fence made of corrugated metal panels ran alongside the closest warehouse. Rousing all the adrenaline and athleticism I had within me, I leaped at the fence, grabbed the top edge, and pulled myself over with relative dexterity.
The second I hit the ground on the other side, I took off in between the building and the fence. At the first intersection of buildings, I wheeled left. Then right. Right again, then left. Even if the bounty hunter could see through my hallucinations, they couldn’t see through walls. Unless they were a telethesian, in which case I was screwed. I tried not to think about that.
I whipped around another corner and came face to face with a locked gate. Breathing hard, I scrambled over it with significantly less nimbleness and landed on the other side.
And there they were: the ninja cat, waiting for me.
As it turned out, the bounty hunter was a leather-clad woman in her twenties with short blond hair shaved on the sides and the air of a gangster who could barehandedly rip my head from my shoulders. In her knee-high boots, she was nearly the same height as me.
She raised her hands as though approaching a wild animal in a trap.
Geez. Lienna must have put some nasty-sounding shit on the MPD’s online bounty board: “Unarmed and extremely annoying. His hallucinations are worse than his bite. Deal with him like you would a feral kitten.”
The bounty hunter opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn’t all that interested in a chat, so I split myself once more, sending fake-Kit to the right while invisi-Kit dove to the left.
Before I could take a full step, she snapped her leg out. The kick slammed into my gut, throwing me off balance, and unable to stop my momentum, I pitched sideways.
I didn’t even see what stupid warehouse junk I fell into, but my head cracked against something wretchedly hard and my vision went black.
Chapter Fifteen
My entire existence was swaying, gently rocking back and forth like a baby in a cradle. A baby with a massive headache.
I let out a long groan as my eyes fluttered open. A cramped, dimly lit room with a low ceiling and wood-paneled walls came into focus, and it took me a moment to realize I was horizontal—sprawled out on a small bed tucked against one wall. And I wasn’t imagining that everything was swaying.
Where the hell was I? Wincing, I gingerly touched the side of my head where I’d cracked my skull on something.
A woman’s voice broke through the darkness. “Don’t freak out, okay?”
The lightning-reflexed bounty hunter walked into the light, holding a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other. I scrambled into a sitting position, and the pounding in my head immediately made me regret that decision.