dark hair was longer than it’d been six months ago, though still layered and choppy and looking a lot like a grunge rocker’s idea of cleaning up. She’d lost weight, though, and was more curvaceous, her waist now slimming slightly before flaring into wide hips, her breasts round and uplifted instead of blending into a boxy T-shirt. It helped that she’d begun wearing tailored clothing instead of sweats and flannels, and I was surprised to note she had pretty eyes, long-lashed and the color of warmed cider…even if they were always as hard as frozen pebbles when trained on me.
My drink arrived, I paid up immediately-not wanting to prolong this tortuous silence-and watched the door for other agents. Chandra, obviously feeling the same, checked her watch and sighed heavily.
“Anyone else coming?” I asked, just to fill the uncomfortable silence.
Chandra shrugged and went back to ignoring me. I didn’t bother asking her anything more, but from the looks of it she was taking Gregor’s place on this trip. My turn to sigh. Saying that Chandra was a shit driver was like saying Schumacher was just so-so. She drove like a teenage boy on crack cocaine, especially when I was in the car. I began downing my drink, thinking mild intoxication might help things a bit, but slowed when Chandra looked over.
“I smell nerves,” she said, a knowing smile twitching her lips.
“It’s my masking agent,” I replied, crossing my legs. “It goes bad after a few hours.”
Her expression hardened. “Bullshit.”
“It does. I could go to The Body Shop and buy a better compound.”
Chandra glared, and it was my turn to smirk. She’d found solace after my unexpected appearance, and a place to contribute, in the sanctuary’s lab, where she and Micah came up with scents designed to mask and alter agents’ natural pheromones. Insulting her scientific abilities was like insulting her existence, but if she was going to sling mud, I had no problem dirtying my hands too.
“If you’re so concerned about your masking agent, you probably shouldn’t be bounding through portals when you don’t know what lies in wait on the other side.”
Damn Hunter. He just couldn’t keep his big mouth shut.
“I was practicing,” I said in my defense. “Warren’s been working with me in the alternate realm.”
“He tests you.” And she said it like I’d failed.
“He trains me.”
“He
“Are you insinuating I intentionally put myself in danger?”
“I’m insinuating nothing,” she said, and I almost relaxed. Her chin shot up. “I’m saying straight up that your little vendetta could get us all killed.”
Little vendetta? Tracking down the man who attacked, raped, and left me for dead when I was an innocent teen was what she called a little vendetta? I felt every muscle in my body tense, even knowing I shouldn’t take the bait.
“If you’re so worried about your safety, perhaps you should hole up in the sanctuary permanently. Where you belong.”
It was a low blow, but satisfaction still spread through me when her face drained of color. She stood stiffly, knocking into the table with her knees.
“I’m going to the bathroom. Be ready to leave when I get back.”
I sent her a mock salute and sipped through my straw, watching as she walked ramrod straight, a sturdy soldier disappearing around the corner. Then I allowed myself a small sigh. Leave it to Chandra to turn a simple crossing into a pissing contest, I thought, whirling my stirring straw around in my drink. I didn’t even need to be able to read her aura any longer. She practically spewed bile and malevolence whenever I walked into a room. Even now, I thought, sniffing, a thread of soured milk and citrus lingered, though only a trace amount trailed behind since she’d gotten up and left…
“Bitch!” I leaped from the couch, knocking over my empty glass, and grabbed my overnight bag as I chased after her. One of the waitresses twisted her ankle trying to lunge from my path, and another customer cursed as I barreled into his shoulder, but I wasted no time on apologies.
Clearing the front doors at full speed, I spotted the cab screeching from the lot, and as I yelled again, Chandra’s smile was reflected in the rearview mirror, her left hand waving at me in a one-finger salute.
I quickly discarded the idea of running after her. I might be able to catch the cab if it got stuck in traffic, but I knew she wouldn’t unlock the doors to let me in…and it might raise some mortal brows to see a buxom blond being dragged down the Strip on the back of a Star cab.
Fumbling for my keys, I unlocked Olivia’s Porsche by remote and tossed my bag into the passenger seat. It was a beautiful car. It looked lovely cruising down the Boulevard at night, fluorescent and neon reflected in its tinted windows and off its silky body of silver paint. It whipped around corners like it was caressing them, and shot from zero to sixty in three-point-nine seconds.
But it wasn’t until it hit 110 that it absolutely purred like a contented kitten.
I almost purred myself as I caught Chandra’s taillights just ahead of me on the 95. It was only a couple miles more to the boneyard, and I was determined to get there first. I waved as I passed her, the surprise and fury on her face worth more to me than the car itself, and floored the gas pedal, using superhuman senses to dodge obstacles as expertly as a ten-year-old with an Xbox. I came to a stop alongside the boneyard’s prison-style brick wall and climbed from the car. I didn’t need to glance at the sky to know that dusk was splitting. I could smell the ozone ripping and air molecules disintegrating around me. Chandra’s cab revved in the distance.
By the time she appeared like some vehicular demon, dusk’s back door was wide open and I was standing in front of the wall where our crossing always took place, feet spread shoulder width apart, hands fisted on my hips, smile plastered firmly on my face.
Without reducing her speed, Chandra smiled back.
“Fuck!”
A mortal wouldn’t have made it. Three steps and I dove to the side, the nose of the cab so close I could feel the bumper whizzing by my shin. The sound of the car slamming through-through, not into-the brick wall was mere background noise, the scream of twisting metal nothing but screeching musical notes as my backpack wrenched my shoulder, causing me to flail as I hit the ground. The loudest sound by far was the snap of my arm as the rest of my body landed squarely on top of it.
I yelled out in pain, curling into myself as dust and smoke billowed around me, obscuring the wreckage Chandra’s crossing had wrought, myself included. If a mortal had happened to be standing there-a variable we normally checked for before barreling into the next reality-he’d have seen nothing more than a vehicle smashing into a wall. If he bothered to call the police or an ambulance, unlikely in this part of town, by the time help arrived there’d be nothing to see but a fine layer of dust over an empty lot. By then, dusk would be firmly on the side of night, the wall again whole and closed, and people would undoubtedly wonder what that person was smoking.
It was that thought-the passage of dusk, not smoking-that brought me struggling back to my feet. The pain in my arm was already subsiding, I could actually feel the muscles and tendons separating enough to allow the bones to knit back together, and I winced as I grabbed my bag with my good hand and staggered to the opening in the wall. The dust was already swirling and milky, a muddy congealment that would soon cement over, making it appear as before. I’d seen Warren walk behind the cab after it’d created an opening between the two realities, so I knew it could be done. Taking a deep breath, I dove through.
I should’ve paid closer attention to the timing. As I reached the place where the wall should and would be the densest, I choked on the thickening air. I tried moving faster through the muddy no-man’s-land, fighting for another step, another breath, but the congealing concrete was sticking to me. It seeped through my lips and began lining the inside of my cheeks, inching its way backward and down my throat. I gasped, quickly abandoning that effort when it only encouraged the wet concrete farther into my throat.
I backpedaled, fighting for breath once I’d cleared the perimeter, wiping the concrete from my mouth with equally coated fingers. Back where I started I could only watch as the veil of the wall rose again, the last of the day’s light saluting the valley in a sunless wink off the cyclone wire, before solidifying back into solid brick. The rest of the smoke dissipated, the grit settled, and I looked at the ground. Mine were the only footprints marring the dust.
