Page 60 of Violet Spark
I glanced up to find Alling watching me again. That matrix stuff had sounded like BS to him too. I know it had with hisI’ve got that coveredbit.
Something about glove-matrix thing was definitely off. And yet, I had no power without it, so…? Was the glove-matrix thing real, or just one more way for Dane to control me?
His team had all aimed their guns at me, not Alling. Not Alling’s security either.
Sitting here, sandwiched between all this muscle, I’d bet the million bucks Dane still owed me that the glove-matrix angle was one more way to control me.
When Alling had released the moths, they’d made a web of their own to short out Dane’s SUV and drones. They hadn’t needed a connection to the canister or to Alling.
Except…in the mall, I’d tried to use the purple power without the glove and failed. So why hadn’t I been able to make the bugs work? What difference did the glove make?
I was pretty sure I knew. It was a simple mindfuck, really.
Dane understood thatIthought I needed the glove and he’d supplied some silly techno-babble to support it. And now Alling seemed to be rolling with it too. But neither of them knewwhyI thought I needed the glove.
It was psych 101. In the dark, twisted gray matter of my brain, when I wore the glove, I was a powerful EldWitch. When I didn’t, I was just smoothie-serving Mo.
The glove was a crutch.
“I know we’ve had a rough start,” Alling told me, “but I think you’re really going to like the project.”
I didn’t know what he had in mind when we got to BantaMatrix. Maybe lab tests, maybe a bullet. Probably a lot of the first spread out over screaming time. That would be me doing all the screaming…while cursing myself because Ihadthe power inside me, just no idea how to access it. And then the bullet.
I clenched and flexed my hand. Tried for a lick of purple power.
Got nothing. Nada. Zippo.
Who was I kidding? My EldWitch existed in a fantasy realm of extra lives and magical possibilities, but I lived in the real world where I was my own worst enemy.
So yeah, my chances of surviving this were pretty low.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CRAMMEDbetween Alling’s associates in the backseat of his powerful sedan, I tried not to hyperventilate. Despite my shallow, panicked breaths, their wide shoulders pinched me. These guys weren’t nerdy scientists or even the rent-a-cops favored by upscale businesses. These were straight-up goons with a side of minion muscle.
Alling threw his arm over the space between him and the driver seat and half swiveled to face me. The partly depleted cartridge was in his hand, and maybe it was just my imagination, but I swore the little moths glinted like silver molecular stars in the remaining purple haze. “Imogen—can I call you Mo?”
“You can’t kill me,” I blurted, dragging my gaze up to his. “Or all my bugs will die too.”
Anything to stall him. I didn’t need the glove, but I needed time to figure out how to use my moths without it. With Mom as motivation, I could learn. I had to.
He laughed, and the dashboard lights made his teeth a sickly florescent green, clashing with the violet. “Why would I kill you? You’re our first successful human trial.”
Firstsuccessful? I wasn’t going to get into that word choice right now. “Since you killed Brayden, excuse me if I don’t find your protest particularly convincing.”
His laugh morphed into a deep sigh. “I think you have me wrong, and I understand why. Finding Brayden like that must’ve been deeply traumatizing.”
“Don’t patronize me.” I was sick of that from Dane. My hand burned. Maybe Alling could help me learn to use this power…or get rid of it.
“I’m not patronizing you,” Alling said. “You figured out more, and faster, than that agent back there has in the year and half he’s been trying to stop us. But I’ll explain, if you’ll listen.”
“Go on.”
Alling sighed again, this time with a drawn-out fatherly patience to it. Ugh. “I’m not the bad guy here, Imogen. I’m not in it for myself. I have no evil schemes. But your boyfriend…” His breath this time was more a disgruntled huff. “Brayden let us down, betrayed us—and by us, I mean all of humanity—when he stole our work. Because if the moths had gotten into the wrong hands, then the world order couldand wouldshift in very dangerous ways.”
“Brayden wasn’t like that,” I told him. He’d had my back. “He wouldn’t do that.” Except…Dane had said Brayden had buyers for the bugs. Alling was supposed to have been one, but it seemed now that Alling had been trying to buy back what Brayden had taken.
“Brayden was weak, Imogen,” Alling said. “And hediddo it…or tried to.”
