INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (13 page)

Step. Pull. Step.

“Almost there,” I called out, no longer looking up to give m
y neck a break.

Step. Pull. Step.

I was surprised when I heard her shaky, “I’m here.”

Like a shot of high-dose adrenaline
, I wanted to jump up and high-five her. “What’s up there?” I called when she got very quiet.

No answer.

“Sabina, talk to me.”

I heard a short laugh and not the ha-ha funny kind.

“What is it?” I called out again, half-tempted to jump on that ladder and shake some spirit back into her.

“The world’s heaviest
manhole cover,” she said, so quietly I had to strain to hear her.

“Can you move it?”

I know, I know, it was a stupid question so I wasn’t surprised when she bit off a snort. “If I could, do ya think I’d just be hangin’ here for the fun of it?”

Since I assumed that was a rhetorical question I didn’t bother answering. So we had two options. I
’d follow her up the ladder and hope it didn’t break with the weight of the two of us on it or try a propulsion spell on the iron cover. Except she was between it and me, which meant I stood as good a chance of shooting her up and against the cover as I did of exploding it off.

So I guessed we were down to one option.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” I shouted, taking a running leap to reach the first metal rung.

Chapter
Twenty-seven

I swear that climb was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Okay, maybe not as bad as fighting grimples, djinns, or crazy-assed Weres, but close. Each step creaked and shuddered, making my muscles tense, sweat running down my temples. I could hear Sabina’s heartbeat escalating the closer I came. And I’d been wrong about it being tight, the space was impossibly close-fitting, until I was sure my shirt and skin were rubbed raw by the time I pulled myself up beside her.

“Feel like a damn sausage,” she mumbled as I caught my breath.

And that was before I told her, “You’re going to have to squeeze yourself as far as possible against one side.”

“Why?”

“You want a propulsion spell hitting you full force from a few inches away, be my guest.”

“You don
’t have to be snotty,” she said, but at least she was now leaning as far as she could away from me.

“You so haven’t seen snotty.” Yet.

I had to let go of the ladder, bracing my back against the far wall to free my clammy hands, steadying myself with my wet shoes propped against the metal rungs. Only when I was sure I wasn’t going to jettison down the tube I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath, one smelling of rain layered with gas and oil, two scents I never thought I’d be happy to guzzle in.

Focusing
, I began the chant I’d used what felt like hours ago.

“
Musca. Moveō. Volō.”

A slight breeze frothed in the tube.

“You sure this is going to work?” Sabina asked.

“Quiet.”

Concentrate.

“But what if—”

“Keep chatting and we’ll never get out of here.”

She sniffed in response. That I could ignore.

“Volō. Volō. Volō. Rumpō.

Musca. Volō. Rumpō.

Volō. Rumpō.”

I wondered why the magic felt so sluggish? So hard to tap into? I know I hadn’t used magic a lot in my life until I’d joined the team, but it’d never felt so diluted. Or maybe this was the mercurial response of a gift I’d never wanted?

“You are more than you were,” a woman’s voice whispered against me.

Scared the willies out of me as I jerked, glad the tube was so damn tight there wasn’t a lot of room to jump out of my skin.

Mom?
I said mentally, not wanting to freak out Sabina, or myself, anymore.
Where are you?

“I’ve never left you,” she answered. A response slicing me from the inside out. Now was not the time to tell her she sure as hell did leave me, and my brothers, and my dad. Instead I shook my head, wi
lling myself to ignore her voice, and timing, so I could concentrate on the spell. That and getting out of this hole.

I ignored her presence, and swallowed past the deep lump in my throat
, as I calmed my voice.

“Medius. Damnum. Rumpō.

Damnum. Rumpō.

Damnum absque injuria.”

The manhole cover started gyrating like the lid on a boiling pot. Only then did I realize that if we were beneath a busy street I could be shooting a heavy metal disc into oncoming traffic, and given the size of some of the compact European cars on the street, that could be lethal.

Too late. Like a geyser pulled from a deep well, magic swelled up, thrusting the cover upwards,
as a champagne cork released from its pressure.

“Yahoo!”
Sabina shouted, pulling herself upward to suck in fresh air.

Until I grabbed her shirt and held her back.

“What the—”

“Check for cars,” I warned, feeling like the fuddy-duddy parental unit, so I added, “I’m not going to pick up the pieces from a car ripping off your head.”

“Fine, Mom,” she shot back.

No way had I ever been that snotty as a teen. Okay, maybe once. Or twice. Or—never mind.

I watched as Sabina timidly poked the top of her head out, then shot up. She pulled herself out of the tunnel so fast I didn’t even have time to hear if it was safe.

Must be.

I followed close behind her, but more judiciously, something being an IR agent taught me. But even before I reached the opening, I could feel raindrops washing against my face.

Sweet, wet, clean rain.

A low moan of pure ecstasy escaped before I caught myself and lifted my head beyond the hole's rim.

A cobblestone street, but it looked like a narrow back alley more than a main thoroughfare. There were no people about though I could make out the rustle of a cat pawing through a trashcan somewhere nearby and the scamper of rats against stone. Since when had I possessed hyper hearing?

I didn’t waste a lot of thoughts on the issue as the source of the malevolent red light flashed into my eyes. A pizza joint with a neon red sign that spun and flashed stronger than any beacon warning system I’d ever seen. That was it? I’d been following the SOS siren-call of a pizza light? How sad was that?

“You coming?” Sabina
was already melding into the shadows of the nearest buildings.

“Yeah
.” I heaved myself out, wondering if I should try to find the manhole cover and replace it before some person or car fell into the opening. But as I glanced around, I couldn’t see the disc. Garbage cans and one huge dumpster, cardboard piles, windows with bars across them and scarred metal doors. It could have been any dive area of any major city.

“What are you doing now?” Sabina was gaining a lot more attitude now that she wasn’t dependent on my saving her scrawny ass.

“Leaving the hole open is an accident waiting to happen.”

I swear she groaned, then ran around the corner and disappeared. No good bye, no nothing. Of all the un
grateful, self-absorbed witches …

“Here.” She crept up behind me as I was pulling myself to my feet. I swore she did it just to see me jump.

“What—” Then I saw what was in her hand. A traffic cone. Two actually. “Where’d you get those?”

“It takes about three seconds to find someplace falling apart
in this city. You find one in the process of being fixed and voila, warning cones.”

“But doesn’t that leave another place for innocents to get hurt if these cones aren’t there?”

“Duh! I only took two. The French always use six times more than they need. As if the more cones the more they must be working, when the exact opposite is true.”

Since I wasn’t here to get into a discussion of the pros and cons of the French work ethic, I grabbed the cones, positioned them and went to wipe my hands on my jeans only to realize they’d get dirtier not cleaner. The rain was helping a little in rinsing some muck
off us, but not enough.

First things first though. “You have any idea where we are?”

“I’m thinking
Montmarte
but can’t be sure. Around on the street you can tell we’re looking down on the city and we’re not that far away so that’s my best guess.”

“Wouldn’t it be busier?” I looked around at the backs of what might be closed bakeries and small mom and pop shops.

“Not if it’s early or late enough. Most places shut down by two a.m., and the bakeries don’t start until closer to four so it’s probably between two-thirty and four.”

“I’m impressed.” And I was. I liked her logic.

“So what now?” She cocked her head to the side like a bird waiting for crumbs.

“Now you go your way and I go mine.” Yeah, it was brutal but to the point
. The longer this kid hung out with me, the more chance she had of getting in the middle of more than she could handle.

“That’s it? Kicking me to the curb?”

“For your own good.” Damn, now I sounded like my dad right before he grounded me for months on end.

Exhaustion. That was part of it. Feeling lost and disconnected didn’t help. I had no phone. No money. No way of even knowing if my team was still at the safe house in Paris. My dad was, or had been here, but where?

One problem at a time.

First problem—Sabina.
What about her?

“Don’t even think of ditching me now,” she growled as if she could read my mind.

“You’d be safer far away from me.” That was the truth. Until I could figure out who had nabbed me and why, I was putting anyone around me at risk. It was one thing to ask a fellow IR team member for help. Another to bring a civilian into the mix, even if she was a witch, or wanna-be witch. On the other hand, if I kept her close, at least for a short period of time, I might find out more about who took her and that could lead to who took me. Convoluted, I know, but it made sense to me.

Besides
, I hated the thought of her being alone with a target painted on her. If they had nabbed her once, what was going to keep them from grabbing her again?

“Come on, then,” I said. “But I’m making no promises. I know some people staying at a place that shouldn’t be far from here. If they are still there, and it’s a big if, at the least we could get some grub, change our clothes and find a place to catch up on sleep. Then you’re on your own.” I meant that last part. The team, or Ling Mai,
was in a better position to keep her safe.

“Sounds great,” she said with more enthusiasm then she’d showed about anything so far.

I decided to use the rambling walk through cobblestone streets while Paris woke up around us as a chance to ask a few more questions. Hadn’t someone said knowledge was power?

“So how much do you know about witchcraft?” I asked, obviously more wiped out than I realized as I jumped right to the sixty-four thousand dollar question instead of leading up to it.

Sabina actually stopped and cut me a withering look. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

I scrubbed my face with my hands,
forgetting they were not that clean. Yuck! “Look, I’m not trying to pry. I’m trying to figure out what the bad guys might have wanted from you that I also have. If we can figure that out, we might know who they are or what they want.”

It was a long shot. It wasn’t like there was a Witches-R-Us hierarchy to consult. Some witches followed certain practices or beliefs and others crossed the lines. You could be witch-born, like I was, a Celtic witch, a kitchen witch, a Dianic witch, a Strega witch, a hedge
witch and that was the tip of the iceberg.

“Makes sense,” Sabina admitted, chewing her lower lip. It wasn’t a rousing endorsement. More a grudging acceptance, followed by her starting to walk again, though she kept her gaze averted. I was reminding myself to go slow, though it wasn’t my way, at all, when she started talking
, “I don’t know what kind of witch I am.”

Okay, maybe we did have something in common. If there
were a category of screwed-up witch, I’d be head of the class. But what I said was, “Did someone teach you magic or did the magic manifest itself without study of the craft?”

“You mean like when I made Damion Brown get warts in first grade?”

“Without knowing a spell?” I would not laugh. Of course it wasn’t warts I’d created in grade school, it was a bloody nose. Stevie Urbanik deserved it though. Who knew that would cause so much trouble?

She nodded her head. “My mom didn’t believe I’d done it, but she was pissed about it.”

Now this sounded familiar. Do something that came natural, like being athletic or super smart in math, and you got gold stars and way-to-go’s from everybody. Cast a few rudimentary spells and you were either a liar making things up, or needing to see a therapist.

“Do you know if your mom was a witch?” I asked, looking straight ahead.

“Nah, she didn’t hang around that long.” Sabina creaked her neck as if a physical movement could release the kind of tension riding her. I could tell her it wouldn’t, but some lessons we had to learn for ourselves. She continued, her voice lower, “My mom came and went when I was little. Then after my dad died, she stuck around just long enough to get tired of the mom-gig and disappeared. The landlady technically kicked me out because mom
forgot
.” She used air quotes. “To pay the rent for three months before she took off.”

I was not going to get all mushy and teary-eyed, no matter how easy it would have been. Noziaks were more the kick-butt and take-prisoners type than the warm and fuzzy kind, though the kid
’d had it rough. At least I still had my dad, even if I wasn’t on speaking terms with him, and three out of four brothers since Van’s death. I tamped down the grief long enough to admit that I wasn’t totally alone. “You sound American,” I said out loud. “Not that it matters.”

“Was born in Minneapolis.” She shrugged. “Dad was a musician. We followed him around a lot.”

“Must have been hard.”

She jerked to a stop, her chin cocked up. “I’m not asking for sympathy. Dad was a great guy. Mom
… well, some folks just aren’t meant to be parents.”