Happy Friday! Note, this story is NOT polished. I will be posting a scene or chapter weekly. Expect an urban fantasy world. Romance and mystery. And magic, of course. Enjoy!
PART 3
Mark smiled at me. Cute, not too smart, and currently single since having broken up with his latest ex, he found me attractive and available. Not my fault. I’d tried to convince him I wasn’t interested. I’d gone so far as to lie about being uninterested in men, period. Which Mark took to mean I was gay.
I’m not a lesbian, but the thought of Mark’s big, sweaty hands on any part of my body made me want to be anything but straight.
“Yo, Sadie. You leaving early? You just got here.” He loomed over the low divider separating me from the walkway. My space was one of many tucked away in a maze of cubicles. With close to fifty customer service reps, I was just one more number, and when I left for the day, my nighttime counterpart would occupy this same space.
If only the dividers would keep everyone from peering down at me when they passed or, even worse, from trying to talk to me.
“I’m not feeling too well,” I said in a low voice. “But I’ve been out sick too many times, and I’m afraid if I tell Mr. Hartwell I need to go home, he’ll fire me.”
Mark leaned subtly back at mention of my illness. “Oh, too bad. I’ll cover for you, no problem. Hartwell is at the remote site doing inspections today. Make a few calls, then pretend to go the bathroom. Leave, and just patch your cell phone through the company phones to do your work. All you need is a computer offsite to log in here, and you’re set. No one will know.”
It sounded as if Mark had done this before.
He grinned at me. “No one keeps account of us down here. Just Hartwell. And I won’t tell him you left.”
I smiled. “Thanks.” I fake coughed a few times, answered a couple calls, and knew my luck was running out. I could feel the danger pressing close. An intuition more than anything. I can find things, but I’m not clairvoyant. My mage powers only extend so far.
I grabbed my go-bad, what looked like an oversized, nearly threadbare purse, and hurried down the office. I avoided eye contact with anyone I spotted in our vast cubicle farm and darted into the ladies’ room. Once there, I looked around to make sure I was alone. One pair of gray heels in the handicapped stall told me I wasn’t.
I entered the stall farthest from the end, forced myself to do some business, fake coughed some more until my throat actually felt scratchy, then finally heard a toilet flush and a stall door open. About friggin’ time. I waited while the water turned on and off, heard the woman hum, then the outer door open and close.
I left the stall, itching to get moving. Before I could wash my hands, a stout older white woman in a gray business suit and those ugly pumps stood by the door, holding a gun with an odd piece on the end. Probably some high-tech silencer, so she wouldn’t attract attention if she had to shoot me. Because my life is good like that.
“Don’t move. Hands up. I feel so much as a breeze against my cheek, you’re dead.”
I dropped my bag and put up my hands, annoyed as much as I was alarmed. Hygiene was a must in the city.
“Can I at least wash my hands? I’m not an elemental.” The people after me knew all about me, or so my captors had told me the last time I’d been held at gunpoint. “I can’t do anything but get clean. “
The woman frowned, motioned with the gun for me to clean up, and watched me while she murmured into her earpiece, “I have the subject in the ladies’ room, east side. Will wait for extraction.” Before I could try to ask why me?, she glared. “No talking. You utter one peep, I’ll shoot you.”
After I’d cleaned and dried my hands, I held them up again and waited.
We just stared at each other.
Minutes passed, my escape window growing smaller.
She shook her head, eyeing me up and down, and snorted in disgust. “I have no idea what they see in you. Like all the others, you’re expendable. I say just kill you now and save us the trouble of bringing you in. But he said not to.”
He. He who? I stared at her gun and remained quiet.
“What are you, anyway?”
I blinked. Should I talk?
“I asked you a question.”
A yes, then. “I’m nobody. A mindmage. Classification finder, level 2.”
“Uh-huh. And I’m Aphrodite.” She scoffed. “Try again. No way a simple finder eluded capture for six years.”
I shrugged, wondering how soon her backup would arrive.
Only an idiot would wait for imprisonment. But in order to escape, I’d have to show her things. And that I couldn’t do.
Unless she could never report what she’d seen.
Had they pushed me to that point yet? Could I kill and run with a clean conscience? And sadly, even if I bypassed any moral code, I wasn’t sure I could actually kill her. My abilities fell on the side of defensive, not offensive, magic.
I started to lower my arms. They ached, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the night before last, my turn at the bar Monday night too busy to indulge in free wings. My metabolism is killer fast. No wonder I was starting to feel sick, for real. And that had nothing to do with nerves.
Then she shot me.
A tiny pop from her gun and my shoulder stung as if seized by a horde of angry wasps.
“Ow. Ow ow ow.” I clutched my shoulder in shock, staring at her.
“I said keep them up.” She motioned with the gun.
I moaned and raised my arms, the pain blinding.
“Higher.” She smirked.
“I can’t.” Yes, I’m a lightweight. Hey, you get shot and tell me you feel like dancing the night away.
She was going to pull the trigger again, just to see me squirm. I knew it. So, I did what I hadn’t wanted to. I prayed the power would obey me this time. Just this once, that I’d have some control. Instead of turning into a field mouse, maybe I could become something ferocious. Perhaps I could claw the gun from her hands as a werebear. No, a werewolf. Better yet, a big werelion with huge teeth.
But when I let go of the force holding my secret weirdness at bay, a shocking hint of elemental power released. A jolt of electricity arched from the wall drier to the pump-wearing sadist.
The look on her face as she fried stayed with me as I stripped off my clothes, but I didn’t relent. I couldn’t. Despite my astonishment at suddenly controlling electricity, I didn’t have time to wonder. My window of freedom narrowed with every second.
I swore under my breath as I used a few tendrils of electricity to sear my wound shut then burned everything in my purse but my small wallet, which contained only a few fake IDs and money. I finished off by burning my clothes. I didn’t want them to wonder why I might get naked after being shot. Once everything turned to ash, I scooped up the remains and flushed them in a toilet. And like that, the electricity faded from my body, leaving me dizzy and…me again.
I did my best to ignore the December cold and my aching arm and stood on a toilet, bracing myself as I pushed up on the foam tile in the ceiling.
The framework wouldn’t hold me. Not as I was now. After setting my wallet on a rafter, I let myself flow into the one form I could change into at will after years spent running from danger. I shifted into a mouse as I launched myself up into the ceiling. The foam square settled back down behind me, and I grabbed my wallet in my teeth and ran down a ceiling beam like my life depended on it.
Because it did.