Page 58 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
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I stoodon the corner of the street, dazed by Potts’ rejection, while the sun beat down on me just like she had. When the top of my head started to feel sunburned, I turned back toward the parking lot and I pulled out my new burner phone for the day. I dialed the “Old Lady” number that Gray had programmed in this morning. Good thing he was a rich bastard, with all the phones he wanted us to have. But the leader of Crush insisted it was part of why he and his gang never got caught.
Z answered on the second ring. “Sorry. Had to leave.”
“Are you okay? What happened?” My irritation at Potts bled through in my tone, which was gruffer than I intended.
“I said sowwy, Hawey,” Z slipped into baby voice. “But I don’t wike the big bad man. He awwested me before.”
Guilt smacked me like a brick across the face. “Shit. No. I’m sorry. That didn’t even occur to me.”
“It’s fine,” his voice went back to normal. “I’m sorry. I saw him through the window. And normally no big deal. But he’s a Tock. It’s not like with an Icefire where I could get in and out and past them without them ever knowing.”
I put a palm to my forehead. Duh. I’d realized that but hadn’t put two and two together. I was off my game. “Yeah. I get it. Where are you? Do you need me to come pick you up?”
Z blew a raspberry into the phone. “Nah. I’m good. I’m with my cuz. I left your helmet by the bike.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone and strode quickly toward the bike, blowing out a breath and trying to keep my to-do list straight in my head so that I could focus on it and not the fact that Potts had just abandoned me.
“Figure out her Illusion Spell and then a spell to unravel it. Figure out how to help an Unnatural shift from an animal into human.” I didn’t think we could administer the serum to my brother if he was in bat form. “Look up how to safely catch bats. And vamps.”
Fuck. That was a list full of awful. And I had to add avoiding Detective Muller to it. And a funeral.
Pile on the fact that no vamp who’d ever been locked up had ever gotten out—until now. It seemed almost impossible.
But I’d done the impossible now. I’d broken into the Pinnacle and walked back out. I’d make this Institute my bitch.I’ll break in and walk out with Matthew in twenty minutes. It’ll be a piece of cake,I reassured myself. Potts didn’t know what she was talking about. She was wrong. She was being her lecture-y, life-lessony counselor self when all I had needed was a friend and a damned spell.
Fuck her.
I found my helmet on the asphalt next to my tires and it was so hot from the sun that it nearly burned my palm when I picked it up. I ended up setting it on the seat of my ride while I pulled a self-inking, disposable mini wand out of my jacket. Gray had tossed these around like candy this morning, telling us to keep a couple on us at all times. They even came with a tiny strip of parchment on the end, for single spell use. I rolled out the little parchment, ripped it off the pen, then wrote the spell that brought my helmet back to regular size.
I texted Gray after I’d mounted my bike. He gave me our new location, which I programmed into my navigation. Then I drove for nearly an hour, crossing state lines and going through small towns with cutesy storefronts before I got to my destination. I hardly saw my surroundings though. Inside, I was still a mass of frustration and hurt from Potts’ betrayal. In order to shove down my emotions, I spent the drive brainstorming. When I arrived at the rental home Gray had procured, I thought I might have figured out how Potts had written her Illusion Spell to hide Matthew.
I didn’t even need her.
I parked the bike on a calm, residential side street lined with century-old trees, just like Gray had instructed. I climbed off my bike, took off my helmet, and smiled at an old woman walking her dog. I waited until she’d rounded the corner to call Gray again. “I’m here. I’m gonna circle the block on foot before I come in.”
“On it. While you walk, make the phone small and ditch it down a storm drain. Do I need to say … make sure no one sees?”
I heard the buzz of a drone lifting off a nearby rooftop and glanced up to see a small black dot circling high above me. “That you?” I asked Gray.
“Yup. Gonna check you for tail feathers. Can’t be too careful since you ran into a pinhead.”
“How very norm of you, using a drone and all,” I said wryly.
“Isn’t it? This is a norm neighborhood, so I thought it was a little more subtle than hiding a bunch of amulets in the trees.”
“You did that too, right?” I asked, walking over a huge uneven crack in the sidewalk and then around an overgrown bush that had encroached on the sidewalk.
“Of course. Got a couple of Honesty Amulets and a couple Confusion Amulets scattered around.”
“That ass is looking good,” Gray made anmmmmsound.
“Thanks—”
“Nobody on it.”
Apparently, I’d interrupted him. He was more concerned about my tail. I was glad he couldn’t see my flaming cheeks when he chuckled. I just hung up on him and ducked behind a second overgrown bush. I knelt in someone’s yard and quickly uploaded the video of Muller I’d taken to the cloud, in the hope that Malcolm or one of his contacts could start a little smear campaign. Then I used another disposable wand to shrink my phone. I wrote this spell a little more specifically than the last one, because I didn’t want to choke any fish. I made the phone shrink to the size of a Tic-Tac. Then I scuttled out of that yard, startling a mailman.
