Page 124 of Junk Magic

Or maybe not.

“Climb on,” Jack told me, only it wasn’t Jack anymore. It was—

“Sienna Thunderbird,” I said, staring at him, and finally understanding.

“Yeah, only it missed mom. I’m the first in the family since grandpa,” he said, crouching down and shaking a mass of iridescent feathers at me.

They spread out in great wings the size of a small jet’s, shading the whole roof and then some. I didn’t know what color they actually were, because they seemed to take on the surrounding hues of nature. Which right now meant that the rising sun was painting them a glorious, fiery red-gold.

“Hurry!” he added, as the sound of boots came from below, this time heading up.

Probably had cameras in the stairs, too, I thought, and clambered onto the great back.

I didn’t bother locking the door, since presumably everyone had keys, and of course, I couldn’t do a spell. I just grabbed hold of a handful of feathered skin and hoped that I wasn’t going to regret this. And then really hoped that, as the great bird stood back up and started running for the roofline in great, leaping strides.

The power thrumming underneath me was unreal, with little electric sparks glittering in the air all around us. I couldn’t tell if that was the drug kicking in or just the way this whole thing worked, and didn’t have time to figure it out. Not before—

“Oh, my God!” I yelled, as we dipped downward, almost touching the ground, close enough that I could have reached out and touched it if I hadn’t been holding on for dear life. And then swooped upward, so fast and so hard that I’d have gone tumbling off the back if not for the potion lending me extra strength.

I almost did anyway, when I heard the door slam open behind me and felt a stun spell zip through the air beside me. And miss because we weren’t merely flying. Feels like a jet, too, I thought, laughing in disbelief, with the roar of the wind tearing the sound away almost before it left my lips.

I looked back to see a bunch of war mages pouring onto the roof, but no more spells came our way, because we were already out of range, souring high into the fiery ball of the sun, the great wings bearing us aloft.

And then we were gone.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Are you insane?” Caleb asked, his voice sounding hushed over the phone, probably because he was within earshot of someone. “Seriously, I’m asking. Have you lost your goddamned mind?”

“Possibly,” I agreed, watching Vegas traffic stream by the tinted window of the limo I was riding in. “But if you don’t go in now, whoever else Jenkins was working with might wipe the camera footage or destroy the evidence, and we need that.”

“I want you to listen to yourself,” Caleb said, slowly and carefully, so that I got every word. “You killed two Corpsmen, committed acts which led to the injury of seven more, and trashed a Corps facility—”

“I didn’t trash it. It may have ended up that way, but—”

“—and not surprisingly, there’s a warrant out for your arrest!” His voice had risen on that last word, and then abruptly cut out when he remembered where he was, which was in HQ’s infirmary.

He was finally getting his injuries checked out after spending half the night being debriefed, and most of the day holed up in his office writing his report. And I knew without asking that it had been thorough, because my scruples didn’t apply to my partner. He was willing to overlook certain things, but a major battle wasn’t one of them.

I didn’t blame him, but I did need him, and he seemed fixated on the warrant. Which . . . wasn’t ideal. But on the list of things that I had to worry about right now it was sitting pretty low.

“I hear you,” I began, which only seemed to infuriate him further.

“People only say that when they do not, emphatically do not in your case, hear a goddamned thing! I don’t need you to hear me. I need you to come in—”

“I can’t do that—”

“You have to! Lia, anybody who comes across you will shoot on sight! You killed two people and turned a dangerous predator loose on the city—”

“Which one?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Which—the one you flew away on!”

Oh.

“He’s a fifteen-year-old boy, Caleb, and he’s currently wrapped in his favorite blanket, eating cereal and watching anime—”

“He’s a dangerous predator and he’s loose thanks to you!”

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