Then again, my excuse had been just as bad. I’d told them that I had a stomachache, and that Raffe was in a bad mood after seeing his dad. Everyone but Harley would have understood the subtext in the last bit. Part of me wanted to tell her what was going on with Raffe, but that was his secret to tell.
Alton nodded. “Yes, Stella and Channing did some digging last night, and they’ve managed to pick up a trail for Marjorie Phillips.”
Channing smirked with glee, satisfaction oozing out of him, and even Stella looked a little smug. You wouldn’t even have a lead if it weren’t for Astrid and her crazy-smart genius, so wipe those looks off your faces. We’d done the legwork, and they were snatching up the prize.
“Has she been spotted somewhere?” Tatyana asked, her voice cool and calm. A freaking ice goddess amongst women. My emotions were far less easy to smother.
“She was seen on the outskirts of the city,” Alton continued. “I want you to go after her as soon as we’re finished here. Harley, Wade, Santana, Raffe, Channing, and Stella—you will go out in the field and check her last known location. See if you can pick up on anything else that can take us to her. Tatyana and Dylan, I need you to follow up on another lead that Astrid gave me this morning—a shifty sighting of magical behavior not far from La Jolla.”
I shot a pointed look at the Californian cyborgs. Anything you do, Astrid can do better… and single-handed. See how you like those manzanas.
“What about me?” Garrett asked.
“I was getting to you,” Alton replied sharply. “You will join Astrid in the command center—our eye in the sky, if you will. You’ll observe the live cameras and watch for any online chatter. The others will have earpieces. It will be your job to guide them through any tricky situations so they can catch Marjorie.” He turned his attention back to the field team. “As soon as you have her, I need you to bring her back to the coven without delay. She’ll be safe here, but Katherine’s agents may be watching you, and they may attempt to intercept Marjorie on your way back.”
Astrid was perched on the armrest of Garrett’s chair. She shuffled closer, her leg brushing his and a shy smile appearing on her face. Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me, chica! There was definitely some coziness going on that I hadn’t seen before. To my surprise, he seemed to welcome it, throwing her a devil-may-care expression. I knew that look from firsthand experience. You treat her badly, Garrett Kyteler, you’ll have me to deal with. If you like your huevos where they are, do not break her sweet friggin’ heart.
“Any further questions?” Alton asked, not seeming to notice that he’d become Astrid and Garrett’s matchmaker.
A rumble of assent made its way around the group.
“Good, then you’re dismissed. Tell Astrid and Garrett as soon as you reach the location. I’ll be popping in and out to check up on things,” Alton continued. “Good luck, all of you. Let’s bring back at least one of these magical kids, safe and sound.”
The group got up and headed for the door. Naturally, I gravitated toward Raffe, though he didn’t seem too talkative this morning. All through the hallway, he kept casting me hesitant glances, before dropping his gaze to the marble floor, over and over again. I knew there couldn’t be anything that interesting on the ground. Making it to the foyer of the Fleet Science Center with the looks still darting my way, I reached the end of my rope.
“What’s up with you? Something you wanna say to me?” I asked bluntly.
He blushed, making me wish I’d reined in my sharp tongue. “I wanted to know if you were okay—after last night, I mean,” he whispered. “I was going to come find you this morning, but Wade dragged me to Alton’s office before I could.”
I frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? You’re the one I’m worried about.”
“I guess I was wondering if your opinion of me might’ve changed. You haven’t met the djinn before, and he’s… well, he’s different.”
I stopped walking and looked him dead in the eye. “Of course my opinion of you hasn’t changed. Are you kidding? If anything, I admire you even more than I did before. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of strength it takes to keep that demon at bay.”
Raffe smiled, his cheeks reddening again. “Are you sure you’re not completely freaked out?”
“No way. It takes more than a smutty-mouthed demon to frighten me,” I replied. “Anyway, we had a pretty good conversation, once he’d calmed down. I named him, remember? There’s power in that.”
“Maybe there is, but the djinn is way more dangerous than you give him credit for. He can’t be trusted, under any circumstances,” Raffe said, urgency in his voice. “If he managed to overcome me, and ran free with my body, the djinn could kill everyone in the coven, and he’d laugh like a hyena while he was at it. He takes pleasure in pain. It’s who he is.”
Across the foyer, Harley cast us a curious look. I noticed that Raffe kept his voice down whenever he spoke about the djinn in Harley’s presence. It saddened me to see him hide like that. None of us had judged Harley for her past. She wouldn’t judge Raffe for his.
“You know, you can’t keep distancing yourself from other people, just because you’re afraid of what they’ll think,” I said pointedly. “Everyone has a dark side. Yours just happens to be a little more… vocal than others’.”
“That’s a cute way of putting it,” he replied dryly.
“You need to give Harley a chance to see the real you, the two sides that make up who you are. Let her decide for herself. She’s our colleague and friend.” I glanced at Harley. “Plus, she’s got some idea that something’s going on with you. I imagine she’s having a tricky time reading two sets of emotions at once. Honestly, it’s probably a dead giveaway.”
He sighed. “But the djinn isn’t really a part of me… Well, he is and he isn’t. He’s not part of who I am, as a person. He just happens to inhabit the same body.”
“I hate to say it, but you wouldn’t be who you are without Kadar, whether you want to admit it or not,” I said. “He is a part of who you are. And I like every part of you.”
Raffe broke into a grin. “You do?”
“Hell yeah.”
I didn’t want to toot my own horn, but Raffe looked pretty smitten at my declaration of adoration. That could only be a good thing, in taking our simmering flirtations to the next level. I liked him, and he liked me. The ball was firmly in his court now. I’ll make the first move, but I’m not doing all the legwork. Get your ass in gear, Raffe, and sweep me off my feet!
“Hey! Raffe! Santana! You coming or what?” Wade shouted, his voice echoing across the foyer.
“Coming!” I yelled back.
“Good, then keep up with the group!”
Raffe and I exchanged a look, the two of us chuckling all the way out the door.
Fourteen
Harley
With a clear sky overhead, yesterday’s storm having puffed itself into oblivion, we pulled up in a dingy back alley in the darkest depths of Mount Hope. Wade had taken me back to collect my beloved Daisy earlier in the morning, but we used his Jeep for this mission. Daisy couldn’t possibly fit all of us, plus the gear.
Any good feeling I might’ve had on finding my Daisy intact faded away in an instant. I knew this area. Before the Smiths took me in, I lived a few blocks away from here. I guessed I was one of the lucky ones—I’d managed to get out. But a lot of kids like me didn’t get the chance. Those years had been a steep learning curve, but there was something about these streets that still called to me. They were part of who I was. It was a dangerous neighborhood in San Diego’s southeast. Even with magical powers, this place put me on my guard.
Mount No-Hope, more like.
“You think the Jeep will be safe here?” Wade asked.
I shot him a look. “I think we’ll be lucky if it has four wheels when we get back.” Evidently, Wade had never set foot in a place like this before.
“Right… okay.” With a subtle glow of his ten rings, he forged a bubble around the Jeep that made it disappear. I eyed it suspiciously; it seemed to work like the one that kept a certain spot frozen in a time-dilation bubble.
“Did you just make it vanish?”
He shook his head. “I put it in a reality pocket, so it’s in a slightly different dimensional space than the one we’re standing in. It’s technically here with us, but it’s also not, at the same time. Kind of like the coven.”
“All you had to say was ‘vanishing bubble.’ That’s all you had to say.”
“Once you two have finished bickering,” Channing cut in, “why don’t we get down to business? We’re here to canvass for any sign of Marjorie Phillips. From her last sighting, we know she’s around here somewhere. Now, we need to make sure we keep a low profile. Magic is a last resort. We don’t want to have to get the cleanup crews involved because of some messy mistake, do you understand?”
I felt like a soldier standing before the drill sergeant, being reprimanded after a bad mission. He clearly meant that we’d make a mistake somewhere along the line. In his eyes, we were a liability. Anyone outside the LA Coven was. His superiority complex was great at riling me up.
Well, joke’s on you, pal, because I know this place and you don’t. I hoped it might give me the upper hand.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Santana said sourly, lifting her hand in mock salute.
Channing glared at her. “Good, then let’s move out.”
We set off down the alleyway and came out on the corner of a pretty ragged-looking street. Down the road, perched on the stoop of a corner store, was a cluster of musclebound dudes, dripping in jewelry and clothes that didn’t fit. It wasn’t unusual to see guys like that sitting out in the middle of the day. They were waiting for pick-ups and drop-offs. That was their job.