The Lost Rainbow Mage: Complete Trilogy Edition, page 47
There wasn’t a whole lot there to recommend Coop and me to her. We were hardly lining ourselves up to be her new best friends.
“Hey, Lexi?”
My heart fluttered. I was going to see Lexi again? Excitement started to well inside me, and Coop’s eyes grew round.
“Meira,” he whispered, the sound harsh. “Get a lid on it.”
I glanced at my hands. They were glowing. If I didn’t control myself, I was going to light up like a beacon and give the three of us away.
I focused on driving the light out of myself, grabbing Coop’s hand and almost using him as a conduit as I forced it into the ground beneath our feet.
A small patch of daisies sprang through the cracked cement, but I focused on drawing more darkness to shield our location.
“I think you got it.” Coop’s voice was dry, but I could no longer see him through the thick darkness.
“I can’t see.” Twain’s terrified whisper came from my left.
“You’re good,” Coop reassured her. “Meira is just ensuring that we remain hidden from view. She can actually do this part pretty well. Sorry, Lex.” He returned to his call. “Things have gone bad here. Lucian’s men arrived. We need extraction with the target.”
I flinched at his casual use of the term target. I really didn’t want Twain to think that was how we saw her, but Coop was in military mode as he reported that we were trapped.
He ended his call. “She’ll be here as soon as possible. Twain, where’s a good place for us to meet a compact car? Can we get anywhere safely?”
I stiffened. Carrying three of us inside the shadow would be a challenge. If I got it wrong, we’d be an obvious dark blob moving along the street, and that was the opposite of hiding. Lucian had probably told his men what to look for, too, if he suspected he was looking for a light mage.
“End of the tracks in the warehouse district.” Twain sounded like she was speaking on autopilot now. “Lots of places to hide.”
“Okay. I’ll send Lexi the location when we get there.” He switched his focus to me—that much I could tell, even through the dark. “You think you can get us there?”
I nodded. Then I spoke. “I’ll try.” It was the most positive reply I could come up with.
“Okay. We stick together, keep the bubble small and tight, and we stay with the edges of buildings where possible.” Coop seemed to instinctively understand that we could easily look unnatural.
We walked achingly slowly in the direction Twain led us in. Even Coop seemed to vibrate with impatient energy, but I couldn’t afford to rush this. I adjusted the shadows carefully as we walked, always trying to maintain a natural shape, contouring the edges so they wouldn’t look obvious or awkward to anyone who saw them. I also didn’t want anyone walking into us, but luckily, anyone we saw seemed to cross the street as though they knew to avoid us.
When we reached the point where the trainline terminated, I fell forward, the last of my energy leaving me in a rush.
Coop caught me before I hit the ground. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Rest now. Twain and I will find a spot to hunker down. He stood, lifting me against his muscular chest, and my eyes fluttered closed as his heart beat against my ear.
Any other time, I would have committed this moment to memory, but my eyes fluttered closed and my brain betrayed me by shutting off.
My world went black as the shadows I usually created crept across my vision.
Iwoke up as Coop set me onto a narrow back seat and began to pull a seatbelt around me to secure me in place. His eyes were very close to mine.
“Hello.” He grinned when he saw me looking at him. “I wondered when Sleeping Beauty might wake up.
My cheeks warmed.
“Is she okay?” Lexi’s voice came from the driver’s seat of the compact car, and I glanced over to see my friend turning to look back at us.
“I’m good.” But my voice was still weak.
When I glanced to my left, Twain sat hunched as close to the closed car door as she could, creating as much distance between us as possible.
“We need to get back, Lex. We’re not safe here.” Coop finished buckling me in and climbed into the passenger seat. “We’ll be safer back home.”
I smiled softly at the idea he thought of his military-style hideaway as home.
“Yep.” Lexi was all business now as she shifted the car into drive and we pulled away. We didn’t exit town past Twain’s house, instead taking smaller streets and even some of the back alleys we’d walked while cloaked in shadow.
I instinctively kept my head low, and Twain had hers bowed anyway, her hair shielding her from anyone outside.
The drive passed quietly, with me drifting in and out of a light doze, and Lexi and Coop entertaining the occasional murmured exchange up front.
I was still so tired.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held my magic for so long, and I hadn’t experienced that same kind of prolonged fear as we tried to remain hidden from an enemy that was hunting us down.
It had been the worst game of cat and mouse, but luckily, it appeared that the mice had escaped.
fourteen
Istirred and sat up on the bed at a knock at the door. Coop had brought me straight to Greta’s and my room when we’d returned.
The knock sounded again, and I rubbed my palms over my face then pushed my hair back from my face. Holy hell, I bet I looked freshly dug up. I certainly felt that way.
I’d slept, but I was tired enough to sleep for another three days, and my stomach gnawed on itself with hunger. It grumbled—perhaps just in case I hadn’t quite gotten the message.
The door opened, and Lexi breezed inside the room, a plate of food in her hands. It was both eerily reminiscent of my first morning at Kiran’s commune, when I’d been brought an abundant breakfast in bed.
Of course, that had been served by a woman who was oppressed by Lucian’s cruel system, and Lexi was the opposite of that, her gossamer wings almost radiating light as she bounced across my room.
“I didn’t know what you wanted,” she said. “So I just brought a little of whatever I could find. “They’re all eating dinner out there, but I kind of figured you’d be more feeling breakfast.”
My stomach grumbled again as I took in the delicate pastries on the plate. “Thank you. That looks great. I am hungry.”
She perched on the edge of the bed and passed the plate for me to rest on my lap. “While you were asleep, I brought in some more clothes and other supplies for you and Greta—shampoo and soap and things like that.” She grinned. “I even brought some art supplies that I got Mrs. Kilkenny to put aside for me. I decided it was about time you started painting hummingbirds again—Coop has made this place far too white. You need to add some color!”
I grinned then sighed. “I think I might be too busy to sit around painting pictures of you. After all, we’ve just brought Twain back, right? We have no idea what will happen now.”
Lexi glanced around like someone might be lurking in a corner to overhear her. It should have been a ridiculous thing to do, but even I looked more closely at shadows these days. I trusted no one now that my own abilities extended to hiding pretty much in plain sight.
She leaned a little closer. “Coop and Edwin have taken her to be interviewed.”
“Interviewed? That seems a little harsh. Can’t they just have a chat with her?”
Edwin was pretty much Coop’s second, almost as if they were some sort of military faction, and usually while Coop ran things here in Alaska, Edwin was still in Florida with Lexi, gathering intel on Lucian.
But with Lucian’s focus having shifted to Alaska, it made sense for us all to band together in one location. We were stronger that way and could make use of our talents, and Edwin and Lexi could apply their surveillance techniques here.
“So, I haven’t been able to ask.” Lexi drew away again, as though any confidential part of our conversation was over. “What was it like being back in the commune house?”
“Ugh.” That one sound spoke of my disgust. “They’re not good memories, that’s for sure. And we were nearly caught.”
Lexi gasped softly. “Caught by who?”
“Lucian and Marcus. They came into the room just as we were finishing up. Luckily, they took what they’d come for and left quickly. Also luckily, what they’d come for wasn’t right by where we were hiding.” I forced a chuckle.
“So did you get what you needed?”
I nodded. “We got the information about me. If there are secrets that we can unlock about me now, they should be there. We might be able to find out why Lucian thinks I’m so powerful, anyway.” As I spoke, I ran through the rest of the events that night. I’d also grabbed a second flash drive that I’d forgotten all about.
I glanced around the room for the clothing someone had taken me out of before they put me to bed.
Lexi watched me pat myself briefly when I unconsciously checked what I was wearing. “Don’t worry. I got you changed so you could sleep more comfortably. I did it after Coop left the room.”
“Thanks.” But I’d left the flash drive about my mother in one of my pockets. With so much going on—first getting Greta home through the portal and then rescuing Twain, I hadn’t even thought about it.
I opened my mouth to mention it to Lexi, then closed it again. I didn’t want to tell anyone yet, although I wasn’t entirely sure why.
Instead, I asked about Twain. “How did Twain seem when we arrived?”
“Quiet.” Lexi pursed her lips. “I guess subdued is a more accurate descriptor, but who wouldn’t be? And isn’t it wild that she looks just like you?”
“Yeah,” I agreed but it was mostly sarcasm. “Just wild.”
“What do you think’s going on with that?” Lexi pursued.
I shook my head. “I’ve no idea. It’s a bit freaky, though.” That was an understatement. Finding someone who looked so much like me in the same state where I was currently living, and where I’d lived in the past, was mind-blowing.
“I wonder how often it happens? Two people just finding their double?” Lexi was still musing.
“It’s quite the mystery, all right.” Only it was a mystery I didn’t have time for right now.
“I think I’ll get up when I’ve eaten.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling well enough for that? Craven will mind Greta, so don’t worry about her.”
Sudden guilt gnawed at me. I’d barely thought about Greta since we’d headed out for Twain. Too much had happened in such a small amount of time, and my thoughts were only just attaching back together, despite my lingering fatigue.
“Everyone here seems really good with her.”
Craven was especially good.
“She’s a great kid. Surprisingly well balanced after all she’s been through.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I was even starting to have second thoughts over whether she should go back to Marcus like I thought she’d needed all along. Maybe she just needed stability, and the Marcus I’d overheard talking to Lucian didn’t deserve to be given the… my thoughts faltered. I couldn’t think of any word other than gift to describe Greta.
Her little life was truly a gift.
“Okay.” Lexi stood now that I’d fallen quiet. “I’ll leave you to eat some food and regain some energy. Don’t feel that you need to get up. If you want more sleep to recover, then get that first. Like I said, don’t worry about anything.”
I nodded as I took a bite of the end of a croissant. The buttery pastry flaked perfectly in my mouth, and flavor exploded over my taste buds.
For a moment, I wanted to just lean against my pillows and sit here eating pastries all day, pretending like I didn’t have a care in the world. Except that would have been lying to myself.
It would have been sticking my head in the sand and ignoring all of my responsibilities to my friends—to Coop and to Greta.
I even had new responsibilities—to the supernatural community, because apparently, I was part of that now—even if I didn’t want any of those.
I wanted to find Coop and ask his advice on Mom’s flash drive because he’d know what to do and I always wanted to hear his opinion.
Only this felt too private. I hadn’t mentioned it to Lexi, and I couldn’t mention it to Coop, either.
It was my mom’s private business and it didn’t feel like my story to tell. At least, not until I’d found out more.
There might not even be any useful information on that drive. We didn’t know what kind of information the commune kept on people or how they organized it. Perhaps it was all useless to us, anyway. Maybe we already knew more than they did.
But I doubted that. I couldn’t think they were backward. Lucian seemed like quite the tactician, if nothing else. I couldn’t imagine he had any issues compiling intel.
Still, there was a pull toward the flash drive I’d left tucked into the pocket of the black pants I’d been wearing to enter the commune.
Finding out the contents of it burned inside me like a want or a need. No, it was more than that. It was a compulsion.
I finished the croissant and climbed from my bed. There were still other pastries on the plate that Lexi had brought, but other than sparing them a quick glance, I ignored them. I’d have time to eat later.
I recovered my strange ninja cat burglar outfit from the laundry pile and pushed my fingers into the pocket.
I withdrew the flash drive and set it on the nearby dresser. Then I watched it as though it might run away as I tugged on my jeans and shirt from earlier.
When I was dressed, I tucked the flash drive away into my pocket, and I quietly left the room. Almost as though I was doing something I shouldn’t have been, I crept down the hallways, instinctively sticking to the darker walls, although I didn’t call any shadows around myself.
I didn’t need to go to those lengths here, and I was still tired. It was too much trouble to use my magic right now, but that alone was unsettling, because what if the time for a battle came, and I ran out of whatever energy powered me? Perhaps I needed to follow Coop’s example and practice with my gifts more often.
The small lump the drive made in my pocket felt like it was the size of a small planet, as though anyone who passed me would see it from ten feet away.
What could I use to read the files on the drive? A laptop? Could I plug it into a tablet somehow? I hadn’t seen many of the areas with tech in Coop’s facility, so I veered down hallways I hadn’t explored before, trying random doors as I came to them, but so many were locked and others swung open to either empty rooms or surprised people as they looked at me.
“Excuse me, wrong room.”
“I’m sorry. My mistake.”
“Oops! My apologies!”
Before long, I had a practiced rotation of exclamations to make as I encountered people I hadn’t meant to.
Eventually, nearly an hour had passed, and I’d found nothing, so I made my way to the practice rooms. I wasn’t sure why, but something drew me there the way something else compelled me to solve the mystery of the flash drive.
I stood in the doorway, unable to help the grin suddenly on my face.
Coop.
No matter that I didn’t want to tell him about the drive, I still wanted to see him. There was still something about him that inexplicably made my heart happy and at the same time kept me grounded.
“Hey.” He turned to me and smiled, his most recent arrow still vibrating in the bullseye.
“Practicing again?” I raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged. “More thinking this time. A mindless activity helps that.”
“Hey, do you know where I can find a laptop?” I blurted the question out then noticed my clumsy segue. There was nothing in what he said that should have made me ask that.
His smile turned quizzical. “We don’t have any here just in case we have people who would use them against us.”
“Like spies?” Surely Coop was able to trust all of his people.
He shrugged again. “Maybe. I guess like spies. There’s always the danger we might trust the wrong person. What do you need one for, anyway?”
I hesitated. I still couldn’t tell him the reason.
“Research,” I said instead. “I’m pretty good at tracking down information, and now we’ve met Twain, I wondered if I might be able to find out some more about her.”
He shook his head. “We just don’t have them, although I don’t doubt your skill with information.” He grinned at me again, and I grinned back, the response automatic .
“I can get you to an internet café or somewhere like that tomorrow, maybe?” He frowned a little. “Maybe a library. We can do something.”
“Okay.” It didn’t feel soon enough, but it would have to do. “You know, I might go back and get some more rest. I think using so much magic over such a prolonged period has really affected me.”
He leaned forward and quickly pressed a kiss to my forehead before drawing away again, the touch so fleeting I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. “Go and get some more sleep and I’ll see if I can get you to some basic tech tomorrow. I have our best minds searching on things here, but maybe you just need to get out and go for a decent hot chocolate, too?”
I grinned again. “You know me too well,” I murmured.
The flash drive seemed to burn in my pocket as I walked away. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
fifteen
For the second time, I was awoken by a knock at the bedroom door, and Coop didn’t wait before he stuck his head around.
“Wakey, wakey sleeping beauty.” He was far too cheerful. “Let’s bust you outta this joint.”
I groaned as I moved, a true old lady noise. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so deeply. It was as though Coop had just woken me up from being dead.
“That rough?” He chuckled. “Let me grab you some breakfast to go while you get ready. I’ve got some things to do back here, so I need to just drop you off and collect you later, but I’ll station a couple of operatives nearby to keep an eye on you and keep you safe.”
