Page 13 of Junk Magic

“Mind if I join you?” I asked, as one of the girls, a petite blonde, glanced at my tattered attire. “Bad night,” I added.

She blushed and looked away, but the other young woman, who had been getting her long, red hair brushed, held my gaze defiantly. She’d done the same to Hargroves when we’d visited together, so I wasn’t surprised. Anybody who could hold that gimlet-eyed gaze wouldn’t have trouble with mine.

Especially now, I thought, stifling a yawn.

“Then why are you here?” Red asked me.

“Sophie,” a black girl with a head of Cleopatra braids murmured.

“What? It’s just a question. I can’t ask questions now?”

“You can ask,” I said. “Although you should get used to being rousted out of bed in the middle of the night. It’s part of the training.”

“Is that what this is? Some surprise training?”

“No.” I sat a couple of six packs down on the table, which I guess they hadn’t noticed because the tattered folds of my coat had hidden them. But they saw them now, and I saw the card players’ eyes light up. “It’s a late-night drink and a conversation,” I added, taking a bottle for myself, because I could use it.

Red—Sophie, I guessed—didn’t do likewise, although the petite blonde that had been doing the hair brushing had no such reserves. “Oh, thank God!” she said. “They don’t give us anything down here!”

“Didn’t think they allowed drinking at your school, either,” I said.

“They don’t, but we have ways of getting stuff in. A couple of the guys—”

“Jen.” It was merely a monosyllable from Sophie, but the blonde fell silent immediately.

Looked like I’d found the Alpha, I thought, and drank beer.

“What do you want?” Sophie asked again. She had pretty eyes the color of pansy flowers and a scattering of freckles over a slightly snub nose. She was cute, but her expression was as fierce as any Were I’d ever seen.

I ignored her and finished the bottle, because I can be Alpha, too. And because my throat felt like a damned desert. I wanted to go home, I wanted a bath, I wanted to snuggle up to my boyfriend—assuming I could find him. I wanted a lot of things, none of which involved sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair and sweating some more.

As a result, my voice wasn’t as conciliatory as it could have been when I said: “Information.”

“Ah. It all becomes clear.”

“Maybe to you.” I drew out a photo of the so-called Relic that Jenkins had given me. “Ever see anything like this?”

Sophie made no effort to take it. But the card players, who had gathered around to drink beer, were a different story. One of them, a lanky Asian kid with blue-tipped hair, actually picked it up and whistled through his teeth. “That’s . . . something.”

“Yeah, but what?” The other, a good looking blond with a deep tan, took it from him. He looked like he should be catching waves in Malibu, not sitting in a warded cell. But then, they all did, or at least, they all looked human. That’s why they’d been chosen for this little experiment that Hargroves was running on behalf of the Circle.

But looks aside, they weren’t that different from the creature on the pic.

Not that different at all.

They weren’t as fearsome because they weren’t Weres, but they very definitely had abilities left over from a different age. Which was why I hoped they could help me.

And why I flinched slightly when Sophie suddenly grabbed the pic, a fact that didn’t elude her. “Relax,” she said. “If we don’t play nice, they send us back to jail.”

“And this is different how?” The third guy asked, climbing down from his bunk to claim a beer. He looked Hispanic, with skin slightly darker than Jace’s, but with a strange, iridescent sheen to it when the light hit him just right. I wondered what his ability was.

Guess I should have read their folder.

“That’s supposed to change if we prove useful, isn’t that right?” Sophie asked, looking at me with a cynical twist to her lips. “They wouldn’t just use us and then throw us away again, after the war’s over. Right?”

On the one hand, I reflected, not bringing Hargroves had definitely been the right move. They hadn’t been nearly so open in his august presence. On the other, this was not a marked improvement, especially considering how good I am at diplomacy.

I decided to play a hunch and not try.

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