Chapter 14
Owen fixed cheesy eggs for brunch that he and Tristan inhaled while I picked at mine. I wasn’t hungry at all, my stomach feeling as if I’d already eaten a plate of worms. Anxiety for the afternoon ahead of us writhed inside me. As soon as he finished eating, Owen disappeared.
“Why are we doing it this way?” I asked Tristan as we left the house. “I mean, why don’t we just flash all the way to the bank?”
“Because we need to be cloaked the whole time and Owen can’t keep us cloaked when we’re flashing. If we appear in the wrong place at the wrong time…there are Daemoni looking for us everywhere.”
“So, this is probably another stupid question, but why can’t we just flash into the vault where the safety deposit boxes are and flash back here when we’re done?”
“Because we need the bank’s key that matches our key to open the box.” I was about to point out that he could easily open it himself if he wanted to, but he caught onto my thought. “It’s against the rules to use magic or powers to gain access to a bank vault.”
My brows furrowed together. “Whose rules?”
“The Amadis. No using powers or magic for personal gain.”
“Oh.” I remembered many years ago, when we’d run into Ian, who had left the Amadis for the Daemoni. He’d complained about all the rules and control the Amadis had over him and now his dissatisfaction made a little more sense. “But this isn’t exactly personal gain. They’re your belongings, right? It’s not like we’re breaking into steal a pile of gold bars or someone else’s money.”
“We’re not allowed. That’s how it is.” He abruptly stopped in the brush and lifted my hand in front of me. The air itself seemed to waver, like it does when heat rises from a hot asphalt road. “That’s the shield. Can you see it? Can you feel it?”
I nodded, though I only saw it because the air vacillated when I touched it and I felt nothing.
“As soon we cross it, we have to flash immediately. I need to concentrate, since I’ve only done this once before.”
The worms in my stomach wriggled again. The memory of Vanessa and the others flashed in my mind, followed by the pseudo-memory of Tristan writhing on the ground in a foreign land. We had been safely confined within Owen’s shield around the beach house. The estate had served as our refuge. Now we were about to leave its safety, risking our lives or separation again. I felt sick and imagined throwing up worms. Sweat beads popped out on my forehead.
“It’s okay, ma lykita. We’ll be okay.” Tristan lifted me into his arms.
“Just don’t let them separate us, Tristan,” I whispered. “I don’t think I could live through it again.”
“Never, my love. But we’ll be fine. We’re just going to the bank.” He winked at me, calming my fears. It’s hard to be scared when your mind goes blank. “Ready?”
I nodded and tucked my face against his chest. He took two steps, then flashed us both. The air was sucked out of my lungs, as if a vacuum mask had been applied to my face. In a second, everything changed around us— the feeling of the air, the smells, the sounds. I automatically inhaled deeply, trying to fill my lungs again.
“You did it!” Owen said with a note of triumph. He stood next to a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows, parked behind a small, brick building. I could see the words Key Largo Christian Church hand-lettered on a sign by the street. Owen had come ahead of us to lease the car because the Ferrari was too small for the three of us and too beat up anyway…and because the Daemoni knew to watch for the conspicuous sports car.
Tristan set me on my feet and Owen started rubbing his hands together.
“Wait,” Tristan said and Owen stopped, lifting an eyebrow.
Tristan took my necklace off, fished the key off the chain, then returned the necklace to my neck. He handed the key to Owen, who stuffed it into his jeans pocket. Then Owen rubbed his hands together again and thrust them at us. If Tristan still hadn’t been holding my hand, I would have assumed he had flashed. I could see myself perfectly, but there seemed to be nothing but air where Tristan just stood, although the sandy ground indented where his feet were planted. Owen had cloaked us. He ushered us into the back of the car, then jumped in the driver’s seat and drove us farther north.
The key I’d been wearing with my pendant all these years opened a safety deposit box at a bank in Miami. Owen pulled the car into a parking garage beneath the building. We followed him inside, staying close to Owen to prevent anyone from bumping into us. The stiff, commercial-grade carpet inside didn’t register our footsteps. As long as we remained silent, no one would know we were there.
I felt uneasy, though. My sixth sense—the one that told me whether a person’s overall intentions were good or bad—didn’t seem to be working. Nobody registered, not even the neutral people. Instead, a low humming sound filled my head. I hoped the Ang’dora wasn’t removing that sense. I’d come to rely on it, especially the alarms the Daemoni set off. Now I felt as if I’d lost one of my connections to the outside world, almost as bad as losing my sight or hearing.
The feeling of vulnerability slid over my shoulders and down my arms, as if an actual cloak were falling to the floor and exposing us in the midst of the enemy. The feeling was irrational, of course. So was my fear. After all, one of the best warlocks and the most dangerous creature on Earth protected me. Nobody could even see us anyway and, like Tristan said, we were just making a trip to the bank. Daemoni wouldn’t attack now, not with all these people around. I hoped.
Nonetheless, the worms wriggled in my stomach again while Owen showed the banker the key and gave her the safety-deposit box number. The hum in my head intensified, becoming more like a buzz now. Tristan squeezed my hand, as if he could sense my distress.
The woman led us down a narrow hallway to the vault, where she stopped and pressed her hand against a pad attached to the wall to the right of the door. A little light over the pad flashed green, then yellow. She motioned to Owen. Owen held his hand up toward the pad and I felt Tristan shift slightly. The light turned solid green. I assumed Tristan had slipped his hand under Owen’s to provide the correct biometric reading.
The banker didn’t even notice how Owen hadn’t pressed his palm flat against the pad. Just a few days ago, I probably wouldn’t have noticed either. Realizing there were so many things we could do with these magical powers made me also realize the Daemoni could do the same. In that moment, I gained a new perspective of how criminals got away with their crime sprees undetected—they didn’t work alone. Or they weren’t quite human.
With a hiss and a swish, the vault door slid open automatically, opening into a room about the size of a standard hotel room. Rows and rows of safety-deposit boxes lined the walls, from floor to ceiling, corner to corner, making the room feel as if it was covered in stainless steel. A chest-high, stainless-steel table stood in the center of the room. The woman led Owen, and us, inside the vault, selected a box and slid it out of its designated space, placing it on the table with a thunk. She and Owen both stuck their keys into the end of the box and it made a clicking sound. She slid the lid just a hair’s width to ensure it was unlocked. Then she stepped outside and closed the door to the vault to give Owen privacy.
Owen waved his hands at us and there Tristan stood, right next to me, already reaching for the box. I held my hand out in front of me, flexed it and opened it again. I did a quick visual check of Tristan’s whole body, hoping my own looked just as real and there as his did. We’d been cloaked much longer than I’d been the other day, when Owen drove me out of Key West. I hadn’t felt any different while cloaked—then or now—but I supposed some part of me worried both of our bodies might have disappeared forever.
Tristan lifted the lid of the box to reveal several stacks of hundred-dollar bills, a pile of white envelopes, some documents laying flat and a host of keys littering the bottom. He placed the envelopes and documents on the table and started picking through the keys.
“London, Athens, Hong Kong…,” he muttered under his breath as he chose specific keys, each approximately the same size as the one that had hung on my necklace. He looked up at me. “Sydney?”
“Sydney what?” I asked stupidly.
“Do you think we might go to Sydney?”
“Australia? Oh, yes! Definitely! But not to live. I want to live here, in Florida, if possible.”
“It might be a while before we can come back, but we will.” He selected a few more keys and stashed them into his jeans pocket. He also stuffed several bundles of cash into his pockets, and then mine and Owen’s, too. Then he picked up the stack of envelopes and started flipping through them. I peered over them, noticing the flaps
