I ducked down behind one of the tables and strained my ears to listen in. If the spy was in here, I wanted to know about it.
“Thank you for what you did back there,” a female voice said. Stella.
“I was doing my duty, protecting a fellow colleague,” Channing replied. His voice was unmistakable. “You already had an alibi. I was merely informing them of the circumstances.”
“I know, but you didn’t have to defend me like that,” she went on. “Channing, I know that now isn’t a good time, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time. And when you spoke up for me like that, it got me thinking it’s now or never. The truth is… I’m in love with you.”
A stiff pause followed, my whole body cringing for Stella. I already knew his reply before he even said it. If I could have crawled to the door without being seen, I would have. This wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to be eavesdropping on.
“Stella, I’m flattered,” he began, “but I don’t think of you like that. You’re like a sister to me. I care about you, and you’re beautiful, too—don’t go thinking you’re not—but when it comes to romance… I’m sorry, Stella. I’d rather be honest now and spare you from wasting your time on something that just isn’t going to happen. You know?”
“Of course,” Stella replied, her tone tight. “No, thank you for being honest. I appreciate it. And, honestly, things will always be cool between us. Like, don’t think this will change our working relationship, because it won’t. It’s all good, honestly. Honestly, it’s fine. I just wanted to get it off my chest. Now that I have, it’s all honestly cool.”
Jeez, say “honestly” one more time and he might believe you.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Channing said. “I don’t want anything to change between us.”
“No, absolutely. It’s all good.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to bed. You want me to walk you back to your room, or are you still eating?”
“I’m going to finish this. I’ll be fine on my own.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, well, goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Channing.”
I listened to the pad of his footsteps across the hall floor, before he exited the double doors and headed into the hallway beyond. Waiting a couple of minutes, to make sure he’d really gone and wasn’t about to run back and confess his love after all, I crawled on my belly toward the doors. Halfway there, I stopped. A small, sniffling sound echoed from the other side of the banquet hall. Stella was crying.
Ah man, what am I supposed to do now?
I couldn’t leave her here in tears. That would just be sad. Still, I couldn’t let her know I’d been listening in, either. Coming up with a cunning plan to crawl outside and then re-enter, making a show of just happening upon her, I continued my slow wriggle across the floor. I’d just reached the doors when my boot squeaked on the polished marble, giving the game away.
“Is someone there?” Stella’s panicked voice asked.
I grimaced. “Yep… only me.” I didn’t want her thinking the spy had come back to take her identity again. With red cheeks, I jumped up and flashed an awkward smile. Stupid stomach, why couldn’t you have just waited until morning?
She frowned at me and wiped her eyes. “I take it you heard everything?”
“I did.” No point lying now.
“You’re going to go back to the others and have a good laugh about it, aren’t you?”
I approached her slowly. “No, of course not. This might come as a shock, but nobody here delights in other people’s misery. To be honest, I was going to come back in and check on how you were doing.”
“You were?”
“Yep. Then my boots ratted me out.”
She smiled sadly. “You know, you’re lucky to have found someone who reciprocates your feelings. I guess you realized I was flirting with Wade to make Channing jealous, huh?”
“I noticed it a little bit, yeah.”
“It didn’t make a difference,” she said. “When I was flirting with Wade, he’d always look over to you to see if you were watching him. I guess he feels like he needs to make you jealous, too. Stupid, really, when the two of you so obviously like one another.”
My heart beat faster. I mean, it was possible that Wade liked me back, but what was I supposed to do about that? “Even if he does have feelings for me, it’s not like he’d ever admit it.”
“Then you should tell him how you feel,” Stella whispered. “You shouldn’t keep your feelings hidden, not when the outcome could be so good.”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “What if the outcome isn’t good?”
“At least you’d know the truth.” She wiped away the last of her tears. “It might not look like it, but I’m happier now that I know where I stand. It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but at least I’m not hanging everything on a hope. I suggest you do the same. A few tears are better than months of uncertainty, believe me.”
I smiled at her. “I guess.”
“You know, even though this place is a little flawed in its operations, the people here aren’t so bad. I think you’re all growing on me.” She chuckled.
“We might be the scrappy little underdogs, but I bet we stand out because every single person inside this building shares the same mission.”
“What’s that?”
“The protection of innocents—magical or otherwise.” I smiled at her and nodded toward the door. “Come on, let me get some chow and then we’ll get some rest. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
Twenty-Eight
Harley
Based on the information from Marjorie’s vision, surveillance was set up around the old warehouse, on the edge of what was now the Tijuana River Mouth State Marine Conservation Area. With the beautifully crafted fake ID cards at our disposal, the coven had little trouble implementing our members into the security team who patrolled the area. Despite not knowing where in Micah’s timeline the vision sat, Marjorie felt confident that he was eventually going to be moved there. She claimed that, after learning more about her skills, she had developed a feeling about visions that gave her some indication as to when they might happen or had happened. For Micah, she sensed it was going to occur sometime in the near future, so we had to be ready for that possibility.
We suspected that the reason behind the children being brought there was because Katherine and her associates—more her associates, since she didn’t seem fond of doing the dirty work herself—had been moving the magical kids around, to reduce the likelihood of being caught or tracked by any of our people. The supposed robberies all across the magical nation were keeping everyone else busy; they only had to fox the San Diego Coven and its boosted security entourage.
All we could do now was wait.
Naturally, I wasn’t particularly good at that. Patience had never been one of my virtues, and with the Family Gathering happening the next day, I was way more antsy than normal. I’d tried swimming; I’d tried running; I’d tried reading; I’d tried practicing my Telekinesis and Elemental powers in the coven training rooms, but nothing could tire out my anxious streak. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure it was anxiety. It felt like something else—deeper and far more confusing. A deep-seated sensation of being unsettled.
Maybe the problem was that I didn’t have any real roots. My whole life had been a series of uprootings, being handed from one family to the next. Sure, I’d learned a bunch from every single place I’d been to, but all kids like me had ever wanted was… well, for someone to truly want us. We wanted someone to claim us as family.
So, the whole idea of the Family Gathering seemed difficult to me, since I had no parents, and my closest surviving family were two aunts. One was in the wind, protecting her protege and unable to contact me safely, while the other was a raging psychopath with a god complex, who wanted to find me and gut me like a fish.
You’ve always been on your own, Harley. So chin up and get through it. Oddly enough, the notion cheered me up and gave me a sudden idea. In honor of the Family Gathering, I figured I’d give my half-brother a visit. There were more similarities between us than either of us probably wanted to admit, considering our fairly lonely paths in this world. He’d been carted off to Ms. Anker, and he’d been manipulated a lot more than I had. I felt it was time I shared a little more of my sisterly wisdom, in hopes that it reached some sane part of his mind.
I’d made more copies of the files that Salinger had given us, regarding Hiram and Hester—the ones that proved Hiram was under the influence of Katherine’s curse. He needed to see them. Plus, I supposed I should see at least one of my family members in the leadup to the event. Purgatory wasn’t exactly a nice place to visit, but Finch might experience a bit of gratitude after weeks without seeing a single soul.
Gathering a folder full of documents, I headed to the Assembly Hall shortly after noon, when I knew most people would be at the banquet hall, stuffing their faces full of lunch. I felt a little guilty about slipping through without Alton’s permission again, but he’d granted me access and had yet to revoke it. And I felt even more guilty for hiding a pretty massive secret from him. Still, I figured I ought to use it as much as possible before he noticed, although I had a feeling he knew where I’d gone. Alton kept a tight lid on these things. But until he confronted me about it himself, I was going to keep at it.
Arriving in the familiar reception hall of Purgatory, I scanned the surrounding area for a friendly face. Not easy to do in a magical supermax prison. As I walked toward two prison guards who were deep in conversation, my eyes lifted to the impressive architecture. Almost like an elaborate honeycomb, every passage and floor forged from clear glass, the corridors crisscrossed above my head. Cell doors lined both sides of each hallway, reaching up to a vertiginous ceiling that seemed impossibly high. I could see people moving about inside a few layers of the stark, gray cells, each person ticking down the time until death or release. Whichever came first.