Lock & Key Page 5

  What if A9 had facial recognition software or something? What if they caught her trying to pass the border, or board a flight, even with her falsified passport?

  There was so much she didn’t know about A9, about the scope of the group, about their real power. All she knew was that they appeared everywhere she turned, regardless of the state she was in, regardless of the town or city, regardless of who she spoke with or what crummy motel she stayed in. They always found her. Always.

  Kat didn’t realize she was clenching her hands hard enough to bend steel until the hot guy seated next to her cleared his throat and said, “You know you’re breaking my handgrip, right?”

  She startled out of her dark thoughts and glanced up, to find she’d grabbed the handgrip on the ceiling of the car. And squeezed it with way more strength than a woman her size should have. She released it, but the damage was already done: the grip was almost flattened in the middle, and large cracks ran through the plastic, all the way to the screws that bolted the grip in place.

  Kat muttered, “Sorry. I’ll, uh, pay for that.”

  The guy shrugged. “I won’t make you. Don’t exactly look the part of a person with money to spare.”

  “Are you saying I look poor?” she said.

  “Yes.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he answered. “Your clothes are too big, you don’t look like you’ve showered today, and you’re not carrying a single piece of luggage. My guess would be that you’re scraping by on what you can easily steal, because you’re on the run from those wackos that magician lady works for, so you can’t afford to stop and get a job.”

  Kat bit her tongue. She’d revealed way too much during their prior conversation, and because she’d let him coax her into his vehicle, he now had one of A9’s targets painted on his back. He was in trouble, big trouble, and he had no clue what kind of hell would rain down upon him when A9 found out who he was and where he lived. God, what if he had a family? They’d all be in danger.

  “Look, you should drop me off.” She pointed to an upcoming bus stop. “There is fine.”

  He gave her a skeptical side-eye. “I don’t think so.”

  “You can’t keep me in your car!” she snapped.

  He sighed. “You don’t want me to get hurt by the bad guys, is that right?”

  She balked. “Well, I, uh…”

  “I get it. I do. I know the exact feeling. You want to protect people who aren’t involved in your plight, thinking that if you can push everyone away, it’ll make the situation better. But it won’t.” He reached down to the console and picked up a box of chicken nuggets, which he tossed into her lap. “It’ll do two things. One, piss people off, because human beings absolutely hate it when somebody makes their choices for them. And two, make it more likely that you’ll end up hurt or dead, which in turn will make people sad and pissed off at the same time.”

  The man pointed at the chicken nugget box. “Now stop trying to escape from the Cherokee, and eat some damn nuggets. You look like you’re about to faint.”

  Kat felt like she was about to faint. Rapid healing had consequences, and one of them was that it drained her regular energy, in addition to the magic kind. If she didn’t eat immediately after healing, she could indeed end up passing out, as she’d discovered in Savannah. Annoyed, but also grateful for the free food, she popped a warm nugget into her mouth and replied while chewing, “What are you, some kind of psychologist?”

  The man chuckled. “Hardly. I used to be a cop.”

  She paused, another nugget in her hand. “Used to?”

  “Yeah, I quit a few years ago.” He paused and ran his tongue along his lip, like he was considering how to phrase his next sentence. “Personal life problems. I needed some space, and the force was too crowded. You know how the police are, right? All fraternal and crap? Close-knit, you’d say. I felt like I was suffocating…” He shook himself out of some nasty thought. “Anyway, that’s why I know it’s a bad idea to push help away when you’re in trouble. I watched people do it all the time. Victims of violent crimes. Fellow cops. Even criminals sometimes, the ones who truly regretted what they’d done. Their lives, more often than not, had spiraled out of control at some point, and they ended up felons because they had no lifelines left, nobody to help them. Some of my cases got real sad, let me tell you. Complete tragedies.”

  Kat still wanted to rebuff his point, convince him to allow her to get out and take her chances alone. She didn’t want to see anyone else end up like the rest of A9’s “collateral damage.” But she couldn’t deny he had a point. It would be nice to have someone to talk to about her problems, someone to bounce ideas off of, at least for a little while, until she figured out a way to guarantee she escaped from her pursuers and dropped off the map permanently. Plus, Marta had already seen him, and she’d tried to kill him. If he was already marked, then…

  She ate another nugget. “Okay, fine. You got me there. I’ll stay in the Cherokee.”

  He smiled faintly. “You can have my fries too, if you want. I’ve got food at home. I only bought the meal because I was, well, spying on people in the McDonald’s.”

  “You said something about that before.” She stared at him. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “It’s my job. I’m a private investigator. Mostly divorce crap, par the stereotype. I was watching a couple cheaters on a ‘romantic’ date, when I felt your magic surge around the dumpster.”

  “Oh.” That was what he’d been doing. “So, you don’t do any, like, magic stuff? I admit I don’t know too much about the supernatural world, but I would’ve thought most magicians did magic-related jobs. Or is that not a thing?”

  His amused expression dropped like a rock, and Kat felt like she’d asked the worst possible question. “I’m not technically a magician,” he replied, the bitterness almost tangible enough to taste. “Long story short, my dad had a falling-out with a magician of influence, who decided to punish my entire family by barring us from formal magic training with the Circle.”

  Kat’s jaw dropped. “That’s not fair. What a dick!”

  The man snorted. “You have no idea. Biggest asshole you’ve ever seen. Unless you count that crazy magician lady who just attacked you in a freaking McDonald’s parking lot.”

  “Marta,” Kat growled, “that bitch. She’s the attack dog they keep sending to recapture me.”

  The man raised his eyebrow. “And who would ‘they’ be?”

  “Well…” Kat worried her lip. If she told him, he’d irrevocably be involved. But since Marta already had him on her hit list, it was likely too late to save him from becoming a permanent A9 target. “They call themselves Advent 9, and that’s practically all I know about them. I don’t know how big their organization is, only that they seem to have operatives everywhere, and I don’t know who sits at the top. What I do know is that their members are largely regular humans, with a few magicians like Marta tossed in for good measure.”

  The man tapped the steering wheel, lost in thought. “So what’s their play? What’re these people trying to do?”

  Kat shifted in her seat, uncomfortable, and ate another two nuggets, plus some fries, to buy herself more time to formulate a response. “They want to create supernatural weapons.”

  “Weapons?” he replied, startled. “What kind of weapons?”

  She bit her lip and stared out the window. “The sentient kind.”

  The man didn’t speak for a long time after that, and Kat watched his horrified reflection in the window as the revelation grew into his mind and took root. Eventually, he whispered, “Jesus Christ.”

  And what else did he need to say? Sorry wouldn’t do Kat any good.

  They drove on in silence, leaving the city center crowded with office buildings and apartments behind and entering a well-manicured set of streets lined with quaint townhouses and independent businesses. He parallel parked the Cherokee in front of an older townhouse whose bottom floor had been converted to a bookshop, and cut the e
ngine. “This is me.”

  “Wait. We’re at your house?” Kat said. “What if Marta follows us here?”

  He shook his head. “She can’t. My car is warded with anti-scrying charms, as is my house, bookstore, and person.” He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a bracelet giving off a faint blue glow. “That light there indicates she’s actively trying to find us, by the way. Or, if not her, then someone else from this ‘Advent 9’ group. But it won’t work. Protective charms are one of my specialties. I make them as a side business, for people who want a little extra protection from the more dangerous supernatural elements in Salem’s Gate. There are a lot of faeries and vampires here, so…” He shrugged, then leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out another identical silver bracelet. “Here’s a spare. Put this on before you get out.”

  Kat slipped it over her wrist, and felt a warm pulse as the spell inside the bracelet activated. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. “Um,” she stammered.

  The man looked at her expectantly. “Yeah?”

  “Can you, uh, teach me to make these?” She fingered the bracelet. “Please?

  His brows furrowed at the desperation in her voice—the desperation she hadn’t meant to reveal, goddammit—and he said, “Of course. Anything to keep you safe from those crazies.” He rolled the keys around in his hand, not quite meeting her eyes. “Say, if you don’t mind me asking, how long have those people been chasing you?”

  Kat sighed. “Six weeks. Ever since I escaped from their Georgia facility.”

  “Facility?”

  “Like a…” She struggled to verbalize the honest word. “It was a lab.”

  He swore. “Let’s, ah, head inside. I’ve got a spare bedroom. No one will find you there. I promise.”

  Kat wrung her hands and built up the courage to step outside, irrationally worried that Marta would somehow break through the bracelet charm and appear right next to her. But she couldn’t stay in the cute guy’s dirty Cherokee all night, munching nugget crumbs, so she opened the door and slid out into the chilly night in one fell swoop.

  Nothing happened. The street was quiet.

  Almost too quiet.

  She shut the door and walked around the SUV, joining the man on the sidewalk. “Not much nightlife here, considering the size of the city.”

  He gave her a thin smile. “Faeries and vampires, remember?”

  “Oh. Do they frequently attack people?”

  The man marched up the steps to the bookshop and unlocked the front door, motioning for her to follow him. “If by people, you mean normal humans, then no. They follow the letter of the law where that’s concerned. Although the spirit of the law is another matter.” He stepped into the store and flicked on a set of lights. “If by people, you mean each other, then yes. There’s a lot of tension between the fae and the vampires in this city, some of it public—they tussle for political seats every year—and some of it less so. Let’s just say there have been a lot of ‘mysterious’ disappearances over the past few months, along with ‘mysterious’ fires, ‘mysterious’ building collapses, and ‘mysterious’ car crashes.”

  Kat surveyed the silent street. Nothing moved, not even the trees in the wind. “Yeah, I think I get it.” She climbed the steps and followed the man into the store.

  He shut the door behind her, relocked it, then guided her through the store to a roped-off door that opened onto a set of narrow stairs leading up to the second floor. Before he started up the stairs, he peered over his shoulder at her. “Say, I just realized, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Oh, well…” I don’t actually know my name. “I’m Kat. Kat King.”

  “Huh, what a coincidence.” His lips curled into a roguish grin. “I’m Liam Crown.” He mocked a bow and gestured for her to climb the stairs ahead of him. “Right this way, Your Highness.”

  5

  Liam

  Liam’s apartment was nothing short of shabby, and he knew it. There were empty beer bottles strewn about, the sink was piled with dishes, the bed was unmade, and the hamper was full. But he did clean at least twice a month, so the place only smelled of microwaved food and “ocean breeze” plug-ins that puffed out a spray of fragrance every hour or so. He closed the door behind Kat, locked it, and reactivated the wards he’d built into the frame to keep out unwanted visitors, then led her to the living room because his kitchen table was covered in a scattered pile of bills he could barely pay and casework papers.

  When they were seated across from each other, her on the couch, him on the faux-leather chair, he swiped the remote off the coffee table and turned on the TV. The local news popped up, and Liam searched the tickers for any updating stories about the disturbance at the McDonald’s. But the anchors made no remarks about a magic fight in a fast-food parking lot, and there was no BREAKING NEWS title anywhere on the screen. Perplexed, Liam pulled his phone from his pocket and googled all the local news sites, only to come up with an identical dearth of information.

  Kat said, “It’s not going to be on the news. It wasn’t last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that.”

  Liam glanced at her, dread pooling in his gut. “What’re you talking about?”

  She licked her lips and stared at a random place on the ceiling, like she didn’t want to tell a painful story, and Liam was about to say she didn’t have to speak when she started. She described a confrontation with a paramilitary team sent by these Advent 9 people to capture her, during which they critically wounded numerous bystanders at a farmers’ market. Next, she moved on to an incident where a hotel had been set on fire, and then explained her situation tonight, leading up to her appearance at the McDonald’s. “No matter how public their exploits,” she finished, “they never end up on the news. They suppress any evidence and stifle the press. Somehow. My guess is that some people high in the government are members of A9.”

  A cold chill crept up Liam’s spine. What have I gotten myself into?

  He scratched at his stubble, then switched the news to a movie channel to dispel the thick cloud of tension hanging in the air. “Okay, so these people are well connected, and they’re not afraid to kill anyone who gets in their way.”

  “Including you.” She dropped her gaze to the coffee table. “Marta saw your face. If she finds you again…”

  “I’ll handle her the same way I did tonight.” He clenched the fabric of his pants. “It’s the ones with the big guns I’m worried about. You can’t employ such large-scale paramilitary action in Salem’s Gate, or any other city with a major supernatural population without…That’s like asking for a war with the vampire lords, with the faerie queens. Those other cities you mentioned, they weren’t supernatural hotspots, luckily, but if ‘A9’ brings that kind of firepower across the city lines of Salem’s Gate, there could be chaos.”

  “So I should leave immediately, you mean?” She picked at a shard of glass embedded in her shirtsleeve, from where the windshield of the Audi had shattered. “Wherever I go, they’ll follow. If I leave tonight, they’ll leave your city alone.”

  Liam’s stomach dropped out. “No. You don’t have to leave. In fact, it’d be better if you stay.” He held up a finger before she could object. “Because I don’t think this shadow organization, or whatever they are, will make such a bold, obvious move, for the reason I just gave. Not only would it be a suicide mission for many of their agents, but there’s no way they’d be able to keep such a massive skirmish under wraps, not with the way it’d attract the supernaturals. They might attempt a quieter, more concentrated effort to find you, maybe send in this Marta lady with some backup, but they can’t do anything like that farmers’ market nightmare. Not in this city.”

  He lay back against the chair cushion. “And trust me, the McDonald’s story might not be on the public news, but everyone of consequence in this town already knows. The fae. The vampires. The shifters. You can’t hide secrets from the supernatural groups that spent millennia hiding their very existence from the human
world. They have eyes and ears everywhere. They know. And this A9 isn’t stupid enough to think they don’t, from what you’ve told me about their ‘recovery’ operations. They’ll tread lightly in Salem’s Gate, which means they’ll tread slowly.”

  “Even so”—she brought her knees up to her chin—“they’ll find me eventually.”

  “Yeah, but by then, you could have a plan in place to escape from them for good, or hell, if we’re persistent enough, maybe even expose them, or take them down. When time is on your side, you have the ultimate power.” He laced his fingers together, a rush of dark nostalgia tingling at the edges of his mind. “That’s something I learned back in my police days.” Three weeks before a serial killer chooses his next victim. Forty-eight hours to find an abducted child before you find their body instead. Twenty-four before a one-time murderer flees the city and vanishes into Canada. “One of the few lessons I’ll never forget.”

  Kat chewed on this assertion for some time. “I was heading to Philadelphia, to get fake papers from a forger. I was planning to leave the country.”

  “Are you sure A9 only operates in the US?”

  She gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look, like she hadn’t considered the alternative. “If they’re international, I’ll never be safe.”

  “Don’t think like that.” He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and ran his tongue across his teeth, again and again, an old tic from his detective days that he thought he’d gotten rid of. “There’s always a way to defeat a criminal. Always. You just have to find their critical weakness and exploit it.”

  “So, what?” Kat cocked her head sideways. “You’re going to help me find it?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Her expression grew even more perplexed. “But you don’t even know me. We crashed into each other in a McDonald’s parking lot. Why would you throw down your life to help me escape from a super-powerful secret organization that probably wants to take over the world? An organization that would kill you and toss your body into a shallow grave, if you gave them the chance? Why would you risk it?”