Page 76 of Just Dare Me
“Tell me that isn’t coming from the Agency,” Nora says.
“That’s exactly where it’s coming from.”
“On your left,” Elle announces.
Jay turns to look at something behind us. I check my mirror to see a firetruck passing Elle’s Tesla, with sirens flashing. “Not a chance.” I stomp the gas, pinning us back in our seats. “Get in their way, slow them down! This is exactly what we don’t want. Jay, call it in, tell them—shit!” I’m cut off by two police cruisers and an ambulance, all speeding for the Agency. “Tell them to stay back! Tell ’em there’s a bomb or something, anything!”
Chaos erupts. I’m in a race with emergency vehicles, trying to avoid marathon runners crossing the street. Jay is screaming into his phone. Nora and Russo are shouting in my earpiece. Nothing is working. The police are still right on my ass, Jay can’t get anybody to listen to him, and the firetruck nearly runs our motorcycles off the road.
There’s the Agency, its roof on fire, but otherwise still intact, with not a soul in sight. A good sign. I tear across the street and jump the curb into the parking lot full of expensive cars. “We can still contain this! Set up a perimeter around the parking lot. Identify yourselves as FBI—”
There’s a blinding flash and a deafeningbangas the entire front of the Agency explodes, shattering every windshield in the parking lot and flinging a tidal wave of bricks into the street. Amidst the deluge is a man’s body, sliding across the pavement like a dead fish washing up on shore. I recognize the body as Adrian York just before I swerve to avoid running him over.
I skid to a stop just as several bricksthunkdown, embedding deep in my hood and roof. The windshield splinters into a spiderweb of cracks. Stepping out into the smoke and ash of the blast, I’m torn between the two converging threats—on one side, a fleet of emergency vehicles full of clueless humans about to see things they can’t unsee; on the other side, Madison West emerging from the rubble of the Agency, followed by half a dozen sorcerers.
Director West is impeccably dressed, as always, but her white, starched blouse is streaked with blood from her nose and lips. Her eyes are bloodshot, her silver hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. I recognize three of the sorcerers: Conrad Paul and Elle’s parents, the Harringtons. They’re also bleeding, their clothes torn and burnt. It’s obvious that the battle was fierce. Adrian York put up a hell of a fight before he died.
But die he did. His body is charred black, sending up as much smoke as the building. Lying broken at the epicenter of the wreckage, he looks like a fleshy meteor that crashed to earth, a fallen angel.
Director West gives me a complicated look. I can’t tell if she’s surprised to see me, or if she’s angry, or something else—maybe even worried about me. Her voice is shaking when she says, “You have to trust me, Shayne.”
“I’d love to, just as soon as you tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”
We stare each other down. I’ll never forget that image, the heat from the fire blurring and warping the air in front of her hardened, determined eyes. “I can’t tell you that,” she says quietly.
Sure enough, there’s one last person to exit the building. Climbing over a mound of rubble, coughing through the smoke, Tabitha Durran joins the group of sorcerers just as Russo’s motorcycle arrives. Charlotte leaps off the back, drawing her pistol on Tabitha. “Show me your hands, now! They go up, or I put you down.”
Slowly, with the slightest of grins, Tabitha raises her hands, showing them to be empty.
“Where?” Charlotte barks. “Where’s the artifact? The brass knuckles!”
Tabitha’s grin spreads into a smile. Blood from her lips runs down the black stripe of her chin.
By now, people are pouring out of the emergency vehicles—cops screaming at everybody to drop their weapons, firefighters hooking up hoses, paramedics rushing toward Adrian’s body. My team pushes back. Russo flashing a badge, calling for jurisdiction; Jay hollering for all of them to stay back, stay away from the body; Charlotte ordering Tabitha to surrender. Elle and Oliver confront their parents, but in opposite manners—Elle screams obscenities at them, while Oliver only glares with silent disappointment.
In the middle of it all—in the eye of the storm—Director West regards me with her usual icy calmness. We might as well be seated across from each other at her desk, as we so often have been in the last six months.
“C’mon, you’re not with them,” I say. “East Side is getting what they want, but you’re playing some other game. I know it.”
“It’s not my game. It was Marco’s. At least…it used to be.” Her stony glare softens, showing the slightest crack in her defenses.
“‘Usedto be’ is right. He’s lost the power forever. Gave up the secret to necromancy, broke his oath. That leaves only you.” She thinks about that with deep emotion stinging her eyes. If I’m going to press my luck, it’s now or never. “Which means it’s not too late. These people haven’t seen anything we can’t explain.”
The cold hardness returns to her face. “They will.” She slides her gaze to Charlotte, who immediately drops her gun with a cry of pain, shaking her hands, as though she’s been burned.
With all threat seemingly neutralized, the police swarm in, ordering all of us to back away while paramedics check on Adrian York. I’ve never felt so helpless. So much power at my command—my team could end this right now—but not in front of these people. We’re too late.
Nora joins me in the only struggle left: trying to get through to Madison West. “Why? After all our work here, the progress we’ve made? You’ll throw it all away?”
“I’m salvaging what I can. You’ll understand soon.”
Nora wipes a tear from her cheek. “I won’t. I’ll never understand this, and if you won’t stop yourself, I will.”
“Go ahead and sing, Nora. You can take me, but that won’t change what’s already done.”
Suddenly, one of the paramedics leaps back from the body. Against all human logic, Adrian York is moving. He props himself up on one elbow, then slowly opens his eyes. I already know what to expect, but even still, those glassy, white cataract eyes fill me with dread.
The other paramedic stands over him, shouting orders. “Sir, you need to lie down! Don’t try to move.”
