“So.” I propped my chin on my hands. “I know how to find Quentin and how to handle him. If you want to catch him before he skips right out of the country, you need me out there with Agent Shen.”

Blythe studied me for a long minute, and though her expression remained stoic, I could see the hot frustration building in her eyes. Her quarry already had an alarming head start. She didn’t have time to waste sparring with me, and she knew it.

I let a smile creep onto my face. “Did I mention I know exactly where Quentin went the moment he escaped?”

Chapter Four

There are three primary reasons I work out.

Reason one: the strength of some mythics’ magical abilities is directly tied to their physical condition. The more you hit the gym, the better you can wield your power. I had no idea if I fell into that category, but neither did I have confirmation that I didn’t, so I was on board either way. I’d upped my training regime to six days a week—cardio, weightlifting, yoga, plyometrics, swimming, aerobics, you name it. If it made your muscles burn and your lungs heave, I tried it.

After Blythe departed the interrogation room, the robustly bearded agent who’d escorted me here dropped off the street clothes I’d been wearing when I was arrested. He also handed a small fabric bundle to Lienna, then left.

Lienna pulled a key from her satchel and stepped warily toward me.

“I’m taking these off.” She pointed at my handcuffs. “If you try anything remotely underhanded, I’ll replace your eyeballs with pepperoni and lock you up with our K-9 unit.”

I arched my eyebrows. “I have so many emotions right now. I’m excited to get these cuffs off, I’m genuinely curious about whether you can do the pepperoni thing, I’m nervous my eyeballs might be in real danger, and—”

With a deft turn of the key, Lienna popped open the handcuffs, and I broke off with a relieved sigh. Holy Sweet Baby Moses that felt good. Not just my newly freed and usable wrists, but the heady surge of confidence that came with the return of my abilities. I could feel my power, like a lightbulb had lit in my head. This wasn’t the time for a test run, though—not with Lienna and her scary satchel of abjuration torture standing guard.

“And?” she prompted.

I had to think back to what I’d been saying. “And I genuinely want to know if there are K-9 puppies and whether I can meet them.”

With an exaggerated eye roll, she pointed at my clothes. “Put those on. We need to keep a low profile.”

Reason two: general health. I don’t enjoy running out of breath halfway up a flight of stairs or struggling to carry a medium-sized grocery load home from the supermarket. Working out spares me all that unpleasantry.

Standing, I kicked off the ugly-ass tennis shoes I’d been forced to wear and paused with my fingers on the zipper of my uglier-ass jumpsuit. “You gonna turn around?”

In answer, she crossed her arms.

Fine then. I yanked the zipper down, shrugged off the sleeves, and let the whole thing fall to my ankles. Underneath, I wore boxers, a pair of socks, and nothing else.

Reason three: the subtle expression on Agent Lienna Shen’s face as she watched me undress. Having worked with plenty of stomach-turning narcissists at KCQ, I do my best to avoid the realm of vanity, but it’s hard not to feel good when you catch someone ogling your six-pack.

I rifled through my clothes on the table, then frowned. “Where are my boxers?”

Said boxers hadn’t been washed since I’d last worn them, but anything was better than the starchy, powder-blue, flesh-abusing MPD-issue ones.

Lienna gave a small start. “Oh. Uh. We don’t keep undergarments, but”—she held out the small roll of pale blue fabric—“they grabbed these for you.”

Ignoring the gooseflesh rising on my skin from the chilly basement air, I took the fabric and shook it out, discovering a pair of boxers identical to the ones I was wearing. Oh, yay.

I rubbed the scratchy fabric between my finger and thumb. “Do you have any idea how itchy these things are?”

She shrugged vaguely. In fact, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what I was saying. Her gaze kept darting around—jumping from my face to the table, then skidding from my midriff to the one-way mirror, then flicking to my left shoulder, tracing down my bicep to my forearm, and abruptly sweeping to the floor.

“So …” I said, drawing her focus back to my face. “No other undergarment options?”

“That’s all we’ve got.” Her gaze drifted down again.

“Hmm.” I bounced the boxers on my palm. “So I have to wear these, then?”

“Yes.”

I contemplated that deeply and thoroughly, then hooked my thumb in the waistband of my boxers and pushed it down an inch. Her stare jumped to my hand and her face flushed.

“Then …” I drawled as slowly as possible, dragging it out to see how many shades of pink her cheeks could achieve. “I should … finish … dressing.”

She wrenched her eyes back up to my face, and when she saw my smirk, she snapped her spine straight.

“Hurry up,” she barked, folding her arms again. “We’re on the clock!”

“You got it.”

I got both thumbs under my boxers’ waistband—and her gaze dropped to her feet. Suppressing a chuckle, I stripped off my boxers and pulled on the new pair. They were as awful as their predecessors. It was like wearing a cereal box around your most personal bits.

I slid my dark wash jeans out of the pile and pulled them on. As I zipped the fly, Lienna’s cautious gaze crept toward me. I flashed her a grin and she scowled back.

Pretending not to notice her attention lingering on my chest, I tugged on a white V-neck shirt, then donned a hooded, earthy green jacket, hoping my outer layers would somehow counteract the discomfort I was feeling underneath. No such luck.

Lienna selected a pendant from the collection around her neck and lifted it over her head, a shark tooth dangling from the chain. Stepping closer, she dropped it over my head.

“Ori mens tua serenetur,” she declared.

A rune etched into the shark tooth glowed for a second, then faded away. I could still feel my powers, but the necklace had deadened them to the point of uselessness. My good mood fizzled out.

Lienna tapped her fingernail against the tooth. “Keep that on. If I see you taking it off, I’ll—”

“Transform cherished body parts into deli meats or send them to a parallel universe?”

“If you’re lucky. Let’s get going.”

“I can’t believe we’re in a smart car.”

The gate to the MPD’s underground parking garage lifted and Lienna pulled the dinky vehicle out onto the street. As per the norm in Vancouver, a drizzly haze coated the pavement, leaving the streets perpetually damp. No wonder Duncan lived here. I’d been hoping, perhaps naively, that the sun would be out, but even an overcast sky was a welcome change from the windowless, subterranean prison.

Lienna turned left through a shallow puddle that threatened to submerge the eco-friendly clown car we were jammed into.

“Why don’t you guys have something with more, you know, strength, power, guts?”