“Won’t it be a bit… dark?” Kane asked. “What with us killing all the lights?”
“I’ll make us some night-vision potions,” I answered. “We’ll be able to see just fine.”
“One hitch with the plan is that the Shades have a generator which instantly kicks in when the power goes out,” Sinead said, pointing at a square in the upper right corner of the diagram, where it said Spare Gen. “The Shades didn’t want to be at the mercy of the power company.”
“Right,” I said. “So one of us—that would be Sinead—will go and sabotage the generator, while Kane and I kill the electricity and get Harutaka.”
“What about me?” Isabel asked.
I smiled at her. “You sit safely a mile away in a heated car, gazing into your crystal ball. Let us know if anything is about to go very wrong.”
Chapter Thirteen
I sat with Kane in his car, waiting. The air was tense and silent, the stillness before the storm. I clenched my fists, breathing, doing my best to keep my fear at bay. I glanced at Kane. If he was worried, it didn’t show. He seemed to be deep in thought.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked, more as a distraction than anything else.
“Just thinking of my sister. I haven’t visited her for a while.”
“In the hospital? What’s wrong with her?”
He glanced at me, and for a moment it seemed he might answer. Then he looked away.
“Okay, guys,” Sinead’s voice buzzed in my ear. We all had Bluetooth earphones, set up to a conference call. “I’m nearly at the location. So drink up.”
I fished for the two vials I had in my pocket. I had already given Sinead her own vial. I handed one to Kane. Our fingers touched for a second, and a sweet chill ran up the back of my neck. I gritted my teeth. Now was really not the time to be unfocused.
I unstopped my vial and drank its contents in one quick gulp. It tasted like battery acid. My tongue prickled slightly after swallowing, and my throat felt scratchy.
“Mmmmm, yummy,” I said, looking at Kane.
He stared at the vial doubtfully.
“Go on,” I urged him. “It will take ten minutes to work, so we should get a move on.”
He drank it and winced. “Ugh. I think there’s something wrong with mine. My throat feels weird.”
“It’s just the basilisk venom in it.”
“Ha ha, you’re hilarious.”
I glanced at him, quirking one eyebrow, and he blanched in surprise. “You’re serious? There’s basilisk venom in this?”
“Just a bit. It won’t kill you.”
He smiled wryly and looked out the window.
He had worn the same trench coat tonight, and a black shirt and black pants underneath. I wore a similar outfit—a black sweater and black leggings. I had also put on my dark boots. My hair was swept back in a haphazard ponytail. I quickly checked my gear for the hundredth time: lockpicks, a tiny flashlight, a small switchblade. My chain was looped around my wrist, and I had a small gun in an ankle holster, which I prayed I wouldn’t need. Shades couldn’t be hurt with bullets, anyway.
“I’m near the shack with the generator,” Sinead said. “No guards here. Are you guys in position?”
We were, and my eyes automatically went to our target. An old-looking utility pole stood across from the car, on the sidewalk. It was the one that fed power to the entire area around the warehouse. “Yeah,” I answered. “We’re here.”
“Cool,” Sinead said. “Just waiting for your juice to kick in, Lou.”
We didn’t want to kill the light before we could see in the dark. I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter past one. We had ample time before the moon rose.
“Do you know this guy, Harutaka?” Kane asked.
“Not really. Just stuff I heard. He’s supposedly incredibly talented, but weird. We never needed a hacker of his caliber on our jobs.”
“Did you do a lot of those jobs?”
I shrugged. “Some. Sinead, Isabel, and I all worked for the same guy, and he occasionally sent us to break into rich people’s houses.”
“This guy… he’s ABC, right?”
I glanced at him, surprised. “I wouldn’t call him that to his face. But yeah. Anthony ‘Breadknife’ Cisternino.”
“How did a sweet girl like you end up working for an asshole like him?”
I blushed, feeling both a bit giddy and irritated. “I’m not a sweet girl. And he may be an asshole, but for a teenager living on the street, he was one of the only options left.”
“It must have been hard.”
“Working for him? Not at first.” I thought back to that first year. “When I joined Breadknife’s gang, I hated myself. After almost six years in shitty foster families, I felt like I was nothing, that I was worthless. That the only point to my existence was the tiny check my foster parents got from social services every month for taking care of me. As if they were doing it well enough to get paid.”
I swallowed, suddenly swamped by bad memories. I shook them off. “Breadknife can spot talent. And he saw it in me. Something I didn’t know I had. He began teaching me how to pick locks, how to sneak, to climb walls. We would go together on hikes in rich neighborhoods, picking targets together, planning the jobs. It was like a sort of father–daughter quality time. I actually loved it. I was happy.”
Why was I talking so freely? It must have been the basilisk venom in my potion. It often reduced inhibitions.
“What happened then?” Kane asked. His voice was soft. He leaned toward me, listening raptly.
“People got hurt,” I said. “I began to find out about small things. A maid was blamed for one of my jobs, and got fired. She was a single mom. Had the cutest son…” My voice faded away as I recalled the son’s face when I’d spied on them. Tired and hungry. “Then it turned out a bracelet I stole had belonged to a man’s dead wife. Our fence sold it back to him for ten times what it was worth, because Breadknife knew the value of love and grief. I started hating it. Then I made a mistake.” I swallowed, recalling the police cars surrounding me, the cops shouting at me to lie down on the floor. “I got arrested. Spent a year in jail.”
I didn’t add the rest. That a few weeks after the arrest, during a medical checkup, I found out I was pregnant.
“When I got out, I knew I had to stay out of prison. So I left Breadknife and his gang.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I was eighteen, and could fend for myself.” I was leaning forward as well. Our faces were just a few inches away. I pulled back slightly, trying to regain my composure. “What about you? How did you end up as a sorcerer?”
“Sometimes,” Kane said, “I ask myself the same question. But if I look back, it almost seems like I had no other choice.”
He breathed slowly, and his eyes had a faraway look. His face suddenly seemed so beautiful and sharp. I saw every detail—his unshaven cheeks, his long eyelashes, his firm jaw.
It was all much clearer than it should have been in the dark. The potion was working.
“Sinead,” I said, turning away. “I think the potion is kicking in. What’s your situation?”