With furious bellows, they charged their pal.

“What on earth—” Tabitha began in a gasp.

“Ignore that,” I cut in, waving a hand. “You ready?”

In answer, she lifted her hands to shoulder height. Her hydromage comrade jabbed her staff in a strange gesture, and water coalesced out of nothing—raindrops, except they floated in the air. Tabitha’s face tightened with concentration, and with a flick of one hand, she froze each droplet into a pointed shard.

With another flick, the Ice Queen hurled her chilled shards across the room. Men howled as icy needles peppered their exposed skin. The four mythics launched for the five goons—and Lienna and I bolted for the pillar.

We skidded to a stop beside it, and Lienna slapped her hand to the rune. “Ori aperio—”

Electricity blasted down the metal. She flew backward and crashed to the floor—and I realized the haze was more cloud than dust. Dark clouds swirled across the ceiling, electricity crackling through them.

Faustus stepped around the pillar, his pointy smile firmly in place and his hands stretched out, palms facing upward. “You will pay for this, Kit. You cannot defeat Faustus Trivium!”

Whoa buddy, that’s a little melodramatic.

But Faustus backed up his evil-villain rhetoric with a blast of grape-sized hail. Wind, rain, and lightning-laden clouds billowed toward me, and I shielded my face with my arms, completely helpless against his weather barrage.

Or that would have been the extremely sad result … had that really been me.

While Split Kit impersonated a feeble psychic with zero resistance to bad weather, I grabbed the bat Lienna had dropped and swung. It struck Faustus’s head with a sickening thump. His eyes went soft and he keeled over.

Oh, sweet revenge, thou art best served with a baseball bat to the skull.

“Kit!”

I whirled around. Lienna stood beside the open doorway in the pillar, darkness yawning. With a frantic glance back at the four-women team pummeling the shit out of Faustus’s remaining men while Eggert skulked among the fallen, ensuring they stayed down, I dove inside and slammed the door behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Darkness enclosed us, the raucous noise outside deadened. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the faint light leaking up the stairwell. What time was it? It had to be after 9:15 by now.

“It’s time for your cat’s eye necklace,” I whispered to Lienna.

She grasped the pendant. “Ori menti defendo.”

Drawing in a deep breath, I pushed aside the foggy tiredness clinging to my thoughts. “I’m going to make us invisible.”

She nodded tersely. I wasn’t close enough to sense any minds in the underground office, so I dropped my invisibility warp-bomb on everyone in my vicinity. To my relief, Lienna faded into nothing, same as me. Woo, first try! And thanks to her anti-magic necklace, she didn’t have a Vera-style freak-out over her sudden lack of body.

She glanced at herself. “Did it work?”

“Yep.” I started downward, and she walked beside me, nervously adjusting her satchel on her shoulder. Our quick breaths were the only sound in the hollow stairwell. “So what’s the plan?”

“We’ll see if Quentin is here.”

A solid first step. Maybe he’d bailed when Faustus had crashed the place.

“And if he is,” she added, “we’ll take him down—without triggering that alchemy trap.”

“Aw, but that was so much fun.”

I could scarcely see her face in the dim light, but I didn’t miss her eye roll. Damn, I loved that exasperated expression of hers. I hadn’t noticed the suppressed amusement at first, but it was easy to see now.

A strange sensation stole over me, like I was falling and rising at the same time. Maybe she had such an effect on me because she expected more from me than I did, and it made me want to claw my way out of the selfish habits of my past to become a person who wouldn’t disappoint her.

That was a strange thing to think, especially for me.

Her eyebrows drew together, forming a tiny wrinkle in the center of her forehead. I realized we’d stopped moving, the closed door to the secret office a dozen steps below us.

“Kit,” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

Wrong? Nothing was wrong. I just couldn’t look away from her eyes for some reason. My pulse beat loudly in my ears, and warmth spread from the center of my chest toward my toes.

I reached out, and her eyes widened when my fingers brushed across her cheek. I drifted closer and she inched away. Her back bumped the wall. She caught my wrist as I slid my fingers across her jaw and into her hair.

“Kit,” she began.

That breathless note in her voice. It was music. It was a siren call—and I was Odysseus, bewitched and helpless.

She was still holding my wrist, but she didn’t stop me when I wrapped my hand around the back of her neck. Her breath caught as I pressed into her. My other hand was on her waist, tugging her closer. Vaguely, I realized my actions were ridiculously inappropriate for this time and this place, but I couldn’t stop myself.

She exhaled in a rush, drawing herself up, lips parting to speak.

I leaned down. Whatever she’d been about to say, it no longer mattered. Her eyes had gone wide again, face flushed, fingers squeezing my wrist—but not pulling my hand away. Not resisting as I tilted her head back.

Our mouths met. A soft kiss, heavy with anticipation, like we’d both been waiting for this moment for years—except we’d only known each other for days.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The thought fizzled in my mind, but my lips were already moving against hers. Her mouth had fascinated me since that first stern scowl in the interrogation room, and now those soft lips parted for my tongue. Our kiss deepened, and as she arched in my arms, I pulled her hard against me, my hand sliding up her back.

With a sudden gasp, she tore her mouth away. “Kit!”

“Hmm?”

“Stop.”

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t real. This is Quentin’s power.”

I blinked slowly. My thoughts were sluggish, hazed with desire. Wrapped in my arms, Lienna stared up at me, her cheeks flushed and chest rising and falling with each breath.

I wanted to kiss her again. I needed to. I couldn’t focus on anything else, except …

Quentin. His name was like a black hole in my head, sucking in all the heat and passion clouding my thoughts. I knew his abilities. I knew what he could do. I knew how he could make you feel things that weren’t real.

Things like an overwhelming desire to kiss Lienna while we were supposed to be stopping him from opening that vault.

I lurched back from her with a curse. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine.” Her gaze skittered across everything except me. “Are you back to normal?”

“Not even close.”

Her alarmed stare darted to mine.

“Knowing it’s him doesn’t make me immune,” I growled. “But it helps me resist. Why didn’t you say something before I kissed you?”

Her mouth opened soundlessly—and her flush deepened. “I was caught off guard, okay? I can’t feel whatever he’s doing.” She tugged her cat’s eye pendant straight. “He must be down there. Let’s get this done.”